


When Those Blue Snow Flakes Start Falling

by authorette



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F, It Did Not Happen, Mistletoe, also I am aware Christmas is over, also featuring:, better late than never right?, but also a surprising amount of angst?, featuring the Forced To Share A House Trope, mulled cider, ok so, snow ball fights, this is a Vanity Christmas Story, tried to write a fluffy holiday piece, tropes tropes tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authorette/pseuds/authorette
Summary: It’s the most wonderful time of the year, except when you’re grieving for your dad and you’ve fallen out with your sister. Maybe that’s why a lonely Vanessa offers her spare rooms to Charity when the pub gets dry rot only a few weeks before Christmas. How hard can living with three Dingles be, after all? (Turns our quite hard).
Relationships: Charity Dingle/Vanessa Woodfield
Comments: 45
Kudos: 308





	When Those Blue Snow Flakes Start Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is late! I was trying to write a super fluffy Netflix movie style holiday story. Instead what I have written is basically an ode to how much family can suck at Christmas. Bah humbug.
> 
> CW: mentions of death of parent; non graphic discussion of rape; brief mention of child death, also very mild sexual content
> 
> Hope everyone who celebrates it had a wonderful Christmas!

**When Those Blue Snow Flakes Start Falling**

Tracy comes down the stairs slowly, holding the hold-all out in front of her, while Pete hovers awkwardly, a box with a lamp balanced on it in his arms.

Vanessa digs her nails into her palms hard.

“That’s the last of it,” Tracy tells them, dropping the bag on the floor and glancing at Pete. “I’ll meet you outside?”

He nods, giving them a last, long look before heading out of the door.

“Are you sure you’re ok with this?” Tracy asks.

Vanessa bites back the _bit late to be asking now_ and pastes on a smile. “Course it is. I’m really happy for you.”

Tracy gives her a small smile. “I just want to start living again,” she says. “And I know it’s soon but I really like him and-“

“I know.” Vanessa pushes down the bitter, mean part of herself. The part that wants to shout that the person who’s been stopping them from moving on for months and months has been _Tracy_ , that she’s the one that just can’t accept the truth.

But she swallows and the moment passes and when Tracy hugs her, she squeezes her back, and manages to discretely wipe away the moisture leaking out of the corner of her eye before Tracy notices.

“I’ll be round tomorrow to see how you’ve settled in,” Vanessa smiles, mostly genuinely, and Tracy beams. 

“Thanks Vee.”

And then the door closes behind her and Vanessa’s alone.

*** 

The evening is alright. She picks Johnny up from the childminder and makes him his tea: turkey dinosaurs and vegetables, his favourite. She makes him laugh by making the dinosaurs fight each other before she puts them on his plate, and then when she gives him his bath they play boat racing and he giggles so hard he gets hiccups.

But after she’s put him to bed, when his eyes have drooped shut half way through the Dr Seuss she’s reading him, that’s when it sinks in.

The quietness.

Vanessa hasn’t been alone like this in this house for years. There was Leyla, and Carly, and then Tracy, after her and David ended. Then her Dad, as well, for a while.

And now it’s just her. All alone.

She squares her shoulders. This is a good thing. Now she can finally pick what she wants on TV! Buy the cereal she likes! Hell, she could walk around starkers!

Not that she wants to. Vanessa wonders if that’s middle age: no one wants to look at your naked body, not even yourself.

She stretches out on the sofa, and watches half of the latest David Attenborough show, but she’s not really in the mood to be depressed about all the ways we’re killing the planet, and switches it off after half an hour. She tries a cop drama but it seems to be the second in a series and new people keep appearing and she can’t keep up with who anyone is.

Frustrated, she clicks the TV off and then decides to go up and read for a bit. She keeps telling herself she’s going to take time to read more, but never gets around to it.

So what that it’s only nine o’clock. She’s a grown up, she can go to bed at nine if she wants. Not like anyone is here to judge her.

Vanessa gets into her pyjamas and crawls into her side of the bed, switching on her half of the electric blanket and shuffling in. 

She manages twenty seven pages of the John Grisham she bought for fifty pence in the church sale in the summer before she decides that she’s had enough of lawyers before bed, and sinks down into the pillows.

It’s December. You’re supposed to feel jolly in December. Care about other people, engage in the community. But instead, Vanessa feels the cloud of grief for her Dad hanging over her more potently than it has in months. She honestly thought she’d been getting over it, but ever since Tracy announced she was moving in with Pete, Vanessa’s felt like she’s been on the verge of tears constantly.

But then when she’s alone, they won’t seem to come out, and so she feels like she’s all pent up. Frustrated, she lets out a huge sigh.

Then she reaches across to the drawer of her bedside table and pulls out her vibrator. Might as well make use of her nosey sister no longer living next door.

Her orgasm is fairly quick and reasonably satisfying, considering how long it’s been since she’s had a chance to do this. But when she sinks down into sleepy contentedness she finds herself facing the empty half of her bed, wondering if she’ll ever share that with someone again.

Then she rolls her eyes at herself and turns the light off. Time to pull herself together and stop being so maudlin. Things will look better in the morning. 

*** 

This is the first year that Johnny has really understood the concept of an advent calendar and he’s so excited for his second chocolate that he’s out of bed and trying to pull his own clothes on by the time Vanessa gets to his room to get him up.

It lightens her glum mood that she woke up with today, to see him beaming over two grams of Cadbury’s like it’s gold.

She’s lost a lot this year, but at least she still has Johnny.

They trudge to the nursery, Johnny trying to name all of Santa’s reindeer and stumbling over the the word Blitzen repeatedly. He runs straight in when they get there, and she remembers with a pang how he used to cling to her leg and beg her not to go when she dropped him off. 

On the way to the surgery, she almost slips on the path up to the front door and rolls her eyes, because Rhona is opening and she’s supposed to make sure that they’ve gritted before clients start arriving. She’ll have to sort that when she gets in. 

But as she gets closer she hears shouting from inside, loud and incessant, and she hurries to open the door.

Pearl is sitting at her desk, leaning forward and looking delighted. Rhona is standing against the wall next to the door, her arms crossed and an unimpressed expression on her face. Paddy has his arms outstretched and appears to be trying to pacify Chas and Charity, who for some reason seem to be having a screaming match in the middle of the vets.

“She is _my_ daughter!” Charity yells. 

“Yes, and what does it tell you that she asked us to stay with her instead of you?” Chas replies. “Maybe that kids don’t take kindly to being _lied to_ -“

“I didn’t lie!” Charity throws her arms up. “Why don’t you go and stay with your own kid? Since he’s got that big empty house now.”

“You _know_ Aaron is going through a hard time right now!”

“What’s going on here?” Vanessa asks Rhona.

Rhona leans close. “The pub has dry rot and they need to move out and close it for a few weeks to get it sorted.”

“Right.” Vanessa says slowly, turning back to the fight continuing in front of them.

“-with Moira?” Chas says, and Charity’s face goes so red that Vanessa worries she might explode. 

“Why doesn’t Cain just move back home, you go stay with Aaron, I’ll be with Debbie-“

“After what Moira did?” Chas shakes her head, appalled. “Charity, it’s been decided. I’m sorry, but Eve needs somewhere to stay.”

“And what about my kids, Chas? The ones that I’ve promised a proper Christmas to and who now don’t even have beds to sleep in?”

“The B and B might have room?” Paddy interjects, wilting under Charity and Chas’s twin glares at the interruption.

Charity puts her hands on her waist. “And I’ll pay for three weeks in the B and B for three people with all my millions, will I Paddy?” She’s as snarky as ever, but her voice waivers a little.

Vanessa doesn’t deliberately try to keep up with the Dingle gossip, but Pearl does, and with Belle working for them too now it’s hard not to know what’s been going on. She knows that Charity’s fallen out with some of the family, and then of course there was the other thing. The big thing.

She can’t imagine what it must be like, to have such a big family and not have anyone step up when you need them. Especially before Christmas. Sure, Charity’s not exactly the nicest person, but that’s pretty harsh.

“I’m sure Sam and Lydia will take you in,” Paddy tries again.

“They’re full with Zach being back and Mandy and Vinny.” Charity snaps, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this.”

Rhona makes eye contact with Pearl and pulls a face. It’s a face that speaks of judgement and ‘better them than us’. It’s a face that Vanessa recognises from seeing it around the village in the days after her Dad’s death, when accusations flew around and no one showed up to his funeral. 

Charity let her host the wake in the Woolpack though, for free. Even brought them some sandwiches on the house. And ok, there were maybe a total of ten people there. But it was a nice thing to do. And despite normally being the first person to stick the knife in, she hadn’t said a word. At least not to her and Tracy’s faces.

“You can stay with me,” she hears herself say, and ignores the way Paddy and Rhona turn to stare at her in horror.

*** 

“We’re going to have some visitors for a while,” she tries to explain to Johnny on the way home, already not at all sure that this was a good idea. “You know Charity? From the pub?”

“Moses lives there,” Johnny nods, dropping his stuffed reindeer, and Vanessa sighs and picks it up. Another thing she’ll need to clean later. 

“That’s right. And Charity is Moses’ mummy and Noah is Moses’ brother. And they’ve had to move out for a while and there’s no where else for them to go so they’re going to stay with us.”

He thinks about this for a minute. “Do I have to share my advent calendar?”

Vanessa laughs. “No, sweetheart, your calendar is safe.”

He nods and smiles as if that’s settled, and Vanessa tries to convince herself that she hasn’t just made a terrible mistake.

*** 

According to Paddy, Charity and Chas have been given use of the village hall for a pop-up bar until The Woolpack can reopen, and Charity had rushed off to sort that, so Vanessa and Johnny are home alone. But then, around half four, there’s a knock on the door, and when she opens it, Noah hovers in the doorway, looking unsure.

“Oh, hi,” she smiles, trying to go for bright and inviting, and steps aside. “Come in.”

“Mum said to come here,” he mumbles, hesitating and then sliding his shoes off before going into the living room.

Vanessa nods. She feels incredibly awkward; somehow she didn’t think she’d be left with Noah all by herself. What do kids talk about these days? She knows there’s something called Fortnite but she’s not even sure what that is, exactly.

“Are you hungry?” Vanessa moves past him to the kitchen. “Or thirsty?”

Noah shakes his head. He looks around, taking in the room which Vanessa suddenly realises she hasn’t even begun to decorate for Christmas yet, and smiles at Johnny who is hiding behind the side of the sofa.

“No, ta,” he answers Vanessa’s offers, glancing briefly at the stairs.

Of course. Teenagers want their own space.

“I’ll show you your room,” she says quickly, gesturing upstairs. “The bed’s not made up but I’ll bring you some sheets.”

He follows her, and Vanessa has to physically stop herself from babbling on. 

When they get to the landing, she hesitates. But there’s no point in dithering, in being stupidly sentimental about a _room_. Her dad is dead, and not letting anyone sleep in the bed he briefly occupied is daft.

She pushes the door open resolutely and gestures for Noah to go in, turning to the linen closet to grab some sheets.

“Here you go,” she says as she walks into the room, but stops short. Noah’s holding one of her dad’s jumpers, the dark blue one she bought him for Christmas last year. Noah drops it back into the bin bag he took it out of when she comes in, looking guilty. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I wasn’t snooping. I just wanted to check what this was.”

Vanessa pastes on a smile. “It’s no problem.” She grabs the bags and pulls them out into the hall. She’d forgotten about them. She’d meant to look through them, take some of this to the charity shop. But then she’d pushed it to the back of her mind, and somehow never got around to it. “Do you need help putting the sheets on?”

Noah shakes his head but then struggles with the pillow cases, and Vanessa quickly jumps in and pulls the covers onto the duvet. 

“Thanks.” He looks down at his feet, and Vanessa realises he feels as awkward as she does.

“I’ll get out of your way.” She leaves and closes the door behind her, shaking her head at herself. How is she going to survive three weeks of this? It’s like being back at university, settling into halls with complete strangers, only this time she’s supposed to be an adult.

Oh well. Too late for regrets now. The Dingles are officially moving in for Christmas, so Vanessa might as well get the house ready.

*** 

Johnny squeals with excitement when Vanessa announces they’re going to put the tree and the other decorations up, and begins whizzing round the living room picking up his toys like Vanessa told him too, while she carries the ladder up the stairs trying not to knock any of the photographs off the wall.

She tries not to think about how last year, Tracy and her Dad had helped get the decorations down and then they’d all put them up together. She just needs to keep busy, that’s all. Stop wallowing.

Instead, she folds open the ladder and clambers up, pushing open the door and flicking the light switch. 

The tree is thankfully near the front, but it’s caught in something and she has to tug it hard, and when she pulls it down she overbalances and it falls.

But it doesn’t hit the ground.

Vanessa looks down and sees a Noah holding the box. “Need some help?”

Vanessa smiles. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

*** 

When Charity finally lets herself in with the key Vanessa made a reluctant Rhona hand over to her earlier, her eyes go wide as she takes in Vanessa, Noah and Johnny and the mass of decorations that have popped up over the last couple of hours.

“I think I’m in the wrong house,” she says. “I was looking for Tug Ghyll, not Santa’s Grotto.”

She looks tired, Vanessa thinks. There are right lines around her mouth, and she sees Noah’s eyebrows pull together in a frown as he looks at her.

“Can we put my elf on the top?”

Vanessa winces a little as Johnny pulls out his loo roll elf that they made at the nursery, and which is a lot less classy than the gold star she normally tops the tree with. 

But Noah grins and lifts him up, letting Johnny put it on the tree, and they both laugh when they realise he’s put him on upside down.

Vanessa walks over to Charity, determined to break the ice. 

“I see Noah’s made himself right at home.” Charity’s tone is hard to read. “Don’t feel bad about telling him to shove off to his room.”

Vanessa quickly shakes her head. “Oh, no, don’t worry, he’s fine. He’s really good with Johnny.” 

Charity shrugs. “At least he’s mostly quiet, unless he’s playing his music at full volume. But just wait until Moses gets back from Ross’s tomorrow.”

Vanessa opens her mouth to say something reassuring, but Charity moves on.

“I’ll take this upstairs, then.” She gestures at the large suitcase and two travel bags beside her.

“I’ll show you.”

“No need.” Charity grabs the case and starts up the stairs. “I used to live here.”

Vanessa watches after her, feeling like she’s put her foot in it already, somehow.

She’s never spent any alone time with Charity, and again suspects she may have made a grave error. If this is how it’s going to be all December, all awkward and stilted, then that’s not exactly a fun Christmas. 

But then she turns sees Noah and Johnny both with reindeer antlers on their heads, chasing each other, and she smiles. On the other hand, it might be ok.

*** 

In the spirit of being a good host, Vanessa invites Charity and Noah to eat with them. It’s just lentil soup, but they both seem to enjoy it judging by their empty bowls, and Noah even offers to wash up, which must be unusual because Charity’s eyebrows disappear half way up her forehead.

The excitement of putting the decorations up seems to be catching up to Johnny, though, as he’s drooping into his plate, and Vanessa scoops him up and heads up the stairs.

“Sucking up already?” Vanessa hears Charity ask Noah as she shifts Johnny in her arms.

“You told me to be on my best behaviour!” Noah grumps. “And she’s nice.”

Vanessa hurries on up. She doesn’t want to hear how Charity might respond to that. Somehow, she’s pretty sure that ‘nice’ is not something she massively values in a person.

“I like Noah,” Johnny mumbles sleepily as she tucks him in, gently stroking his soft blonde hair. “Can we play reindeers again tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” She kisses his forehead and watches him drift off, his small breaths evening out. 

Noah’s got a bit of a reputation for being moody and surly in the village. Not to mention all that nonsense he was getting up to earlier in the year with Liam’s daughter. It took Vanessa hours to catch all those animals they let loose.

And although he’s been really good with Johnny today, Vanessa wonders how much of that is Charity instructing him to be on his best behaviour. God knows when Vanessa was a teenager, the last thing she would have wanted was a four year old following her around everywhere.

She sits and watches Johnny sleep for a couple more minutes. He’s changing so quickly. Sometimes she stops and stares at the pictures on the wall in awe at how much he’s grown even in the last year. The picture of him in his little elf outfit last year is so different: his cheeks were chubbier, his legs so much shorter.

And her dad’s already missed so much of it.

*** 

The creeky step goes on the landing as she’s tiptoeing out of Johnny’s room.

Noah gives her the smallest of smiles where he stands next to her dad’s – Noah’s – room. “Thanks for tea,” he says. “And for letting us stay.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry,” she says quickly. “It’s nice having a full house again.”

“Not sure you’ll be saying that by the time we leave,” he says, with a small, crooked grin, before he closes his door behind him.

Vanessa smiles to herself. Looks like he’s turned into a pretty good young man after all.

When she gets down the stairs, Charity is drying the dishes, piling the clean ones up on the table since she doesn’t know where they go.

“Oh, thanks!” Vanessa quickly starts pulling open cupboards and putting away the bowls. “And thanks for washing up.”

There’s a pause and when she turns, Charity is standing with her arms crossed and that hard to read expression on her face again.

“Alright,” she says, and it sounds like she’s announcing a battle. “The kids are in bed, so you can drop the Mother Theresa act.”

“What do you mean?” Vanessa frowns, opening the cutlery drawer.

“What do you want?” Charity crosses her arms. “Why are you letting us stay here?”

Vanessa’s taken aback by the hostile tone. She was expecting maybe a thank you or something, not this. “You needed a place to stay and I had the room.”

Charity snorts. “No one does anything without wanting something in return.” She narrows her eyes. “So what is it?”

Vanessa shakes her head. “Not everyone has an ulterior motive! It’s Christmas, you were homeless-“

“So this is just out of the goodness of your heart, is it?” Charity steps closer. “One last act of charity before the year is over?” Then her eyes widen. “Oooh, is this to even out what your dad did, nicking the charity money and all?”

Vanessa slams the drawer shut. “You know what? There’s no point with you, is there?” Charity’s face turns surprised at her outburst, like she didn’t expect Vanessa to be capable of it, but Vanessa’s too far gone to care. “Why did you even come here if you thought I was up to something?” She pretends to think. “Oh, that’s right, because no one else would have you.” She shakes her head and stomps to the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

“Vanessa,” Charity starts, but Vanessa’s had enough and she doesn’t turn around.

She gets into her pyjamas with the argument still sitting heavy in her stomach. She feels bad about what she said, now. She just lost her temper. She knows that Charity’s had a hard year, and it was a low blow to point out that none of her own family would take her in.

Plus it must be hard to be constantly on guard like that. Expecting the worst of people. Vanessa’s not naïve, but she still thinks that most people generally are good most of the time.

Being Charity must be exhausting.

***  
Vanessa’s just making Johnny’s toast the next morning when there’s a knock on the door.

Neither Dingle has made it downstairs yet, but Charity emerges when the door goes, hurrying down the stairs.

“That’s Ross,” she says, sounding slightly sheepish. Vanessa just nods. She’s not sure whether to apologise, but if Charity doesn’t seem like she’s keen to revisit the argument maybe Vanessa should just leave it too. Especially since the chances of getting a return apology are somewhere in the minus one thousand region.

“Mummy!” a high pitched voice shouts, and she hears Charity laugh, a genuine laugh that’s lower than her fake, put-on bar-banter laugh. 

“Hello, babes,” she replies, and Vanessa can’t resist but peek at the door, where Charity has bent down to hug Moses and accept a sticky, loud kiss on the cheek from him.

“Alright?” Ross asks, them peers over Charity’s shoulder. “Hi, Vanessa.”

“Hey Ross.” She smiles at him. “Want some breakfast?”

He shakes his head. “No, ta, got to get going again.” He hesitates.

“What?” Charity snaps.

“This is an unusual arrangement,” Ross comments. He’s talking at low volume, but the house is small and Vanessa can still make him out, even though she’s pretending she can’t. “When you said you guys had to move for a few weeks I assumed you’d be going to Debbie’s.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” This time, Charity’s chuckle is brittle and bitter. 

Ross looks at Moses, hesitant, and Vanessa sees Charity square her shoulders. 

She heard, like everyone in the village, that Ross tried to take Moses with him when he moved away. That Charity had to go to a lawyer before Ross gave in. 

Vanessa heard some pretty harsh comments, especially from Pearl, questioning why Charity was even bothering when she couldn’t normally be arsed with her kids. But she looks at them now, at Moses clinging to her leg and Charity’s hand curled around the back of his little head, and she suddenly has the strong urge to diffuse the argument she can sense hanging heavily in the air, about to erupt. 

“Charity, your brew’s ready,” she calls, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ross’s shoulders drop and him step away from the door.

“I’ll see you on Boxing Day then, ok?” he smiles at Moses, tapping him on the nose and waving.

Moses waves back, then runs into the room. “Johnny!” he exclaims.

Johnny responds enthusiastically, and is off his chair before Vanessa can object. “Oh boy,” Charity sighs. “And then there were two of them.”

Vanessa takes a sip. “Lucky me. Two of them, a moody teenager and Noah.”

It takes Charity a minute, but her “Oi!” sounds mostly amused, and she sinks into the chair next to Vanessa’s. “Hey, I’m not on until half twelve so I can take them to nursery if you need to get off?”

Vanessa looks at her in surprise. “Really?” She wonders if this is Charity’s way of apologising.

Charity rolls her eyes. “Yes, really.” She looks down at her cup. “I am capable of the school run on occasion.”

“No, I know, it’s just-“

“No point in both of us going, is there?” 

Vanessa nods. “Thanks.” It’s weird; every time she thinks she knows what Charity is going to say or do next, it’s the exact opposite.

“Calendar!” Johnny shouts suddenly, running over to where it sits on the mantelpiece.

Moses’ eyes go wide, and Charity whispers “Oh crap.”

“It’s an advert calendar,” Johnny explains to Moses. “It gives me chocolate until Santa comes.”

“Advent, sweetheart,” Vanessa calls. “Every morning we go through that,” she tells Charity softly. Then she takes in Charity’s forlorn face.

“I was going to make Christmas perfect this year.” Charity sighs. “I was going to do everything right. And now we’re not even in our house and I haven’t even got them bloody advent calendars.”

Vanessa bites her lip. Something about Charity’s stricken expression makes her chest ache. She looks genuinely gutted. “Hold on.”

She gets up and hurries to the hooks holding her handbags, grabbing the bag for life off the farthest left hook.

“Bought these for Tracy and Pete,” Vanessa says, passing the two Cadbury’s calendars to Charity. “But I reckon Moses and Noah might enjoy them more.”

Charity stares from her face to the calendars and back again. “Jesus, you really are like this, aren’t you?”

“Like what?” Vanessa asks defensively. 

“Nice!” Charity wrinkles her nose. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Vanessa moves to take the calendars back. “How terrible of me!”

Charity reaches out and catches the calendars, and their fingers brush. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing, did I?”

“It was heavily implied.” Still, she lets them go.

Charity tilts her head and there’s a smirk on her face now. “Bit of a hothead, eh? Unexpected.”

Somehow, she makes that sound like a compliment. It makes Vanessa feel a little unbalanced. “Well, you don’t know everything about me.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She gives Vanessa another look, then calls “Moses!” He pulls his big, envious eyes from Johnny’s calendar. “Look, Vanessa got a special delivery from Santa for you.”

Vanessa glances at her in surprise; she expected Charity to just take the credit. 

“Woah!” Moses sprints over, almost tripping over his own feet. “For _me_?”

Something clenches in her, deep and soft. Before Johnny, Vanessa wasn’t sure she even wanted kids. But seeing the pure joy on Moses’ face, remembering Johnny’s excitement last night at the decorations, makes her feel warm inside. Warmer than she’s felt in months. 

He sits on the floor and Johnny leans over and together they look for the right number, and she looks at Charity who smiles back at her.

“I’m off to school,” a voice behind them says. They both look up at Noah, who’s standing awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs.

“Have you got a calendar?” Moses asks, holding his up.

Noah shakes his head, his eyes widening slightly.

Charity opens her mouth, but Vanessa finds herself speaking first. It somehow how seems important, suddenly, to make him think that Charity thought of this on her own. “Actually, your mum got you one too.”

“Really?” She can tell he’s trying to act like he’s not bothered, like as a teenager he’s too cool to be interested, but his eyes light up and he comes over, taking the calendar from his mum and popping open the first door. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles around the chocolate snowman in his mouth, and for a moment Vanessa thinks she might be seeing what Charity looks like when she’s happy.

*** 

She’s planning to have lunch with Tracy to update her on the developments, but she’s barely left the house when Tracy runs out of the B and B, practically accosting her on the way to work.

“Morning,” she sighs.

“So when you texted last night to say you were busy decorating and would see me today instead, you kind of forgot to mention that you had replaced me with _Charity Dingle_ as your housemate!” Tracy squawks without preamble. “Seriously, Vee?”

Tracy and her have had their differences recently, and Vanessa knows she’s probably being too touchy about the judgemental tone. But at the same time, it’s Vanessa’s name on the lease, and she can bloody well have whoever she wants stay with her.

“Yes, seriously.” She shrugs. “They needed somewhere to stay, and it’s not like I don’t have the room, is it?”

Tracy crosses her arms. “I thought you said you were ok with me moving out?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Vanessa replies, frowning. 

“Erm, that’s clearly what this is about!” Tracy shakes her head. “Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want me to go? I could have waited until after Christmas!”

Vanessa huffs out a breath. “You know what? You really are like Dad.” She shakes her head. “Not everything is about you, Tracy.” 

“Vanessa!” Tracy calls after her, but she’s had enough of arguing, and she storms to the surgery without looking back.

*** 

Work is tense as well. She’d come in in a foul mood and had snapped out that she didn’t want to hear a word about her living arrangement from anyone. Since then, Pearl hasn’t said a single word to her, Paddy keeps glancing at her nervously, and Rhona had sighed and then gone on a call out.

When she first moved here, Vanessa had loved the tight-knit, everyone-knows-everyone feel of the village. But the thing with Kirin, and more recently, the stuff with her Dad, has really shown her how shitty it can be when everyone is talking about you. Judging you. 

She’s so done with that crap.

At lunch, since she’s not going to the café with Tracy anymore, Vanessa grabs a sandwich from the shop and then heads through to the back to eat it. But just as she’s opening the wrapper, Rhona comes back, heading to the cabinet to lock away the drugs before turning to Vanessa and approaching her cautiously. 

“I come in peace,” she says, and Vanessa’s shoulders drop. “Come through for a brew?”

“Ok,” she sighs, and grabs her Christmas baguette, following her through the door to Rhona’s.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Rhona says once the kettle is on and they’re both sitting at her kitchen table. “I didn’t mean to come across so judgemental. I think you’re doing a really nice thing.”

“Hmm.” Vanessa looks down at her hands. “I didn’t really even think it through. And then I’d said it and it was too late.” 

“And how is it?” Rhona asks. “I mean, there’s quite a lot of them for starters.”

Vanessa laughs a little. “Moses has so much energy. And he’s only been there since this morning. I think he’ll be good for Johnny, though.” She’s been worried about him since his grandpa died. He’s been more withdrawn, quiet. “And Noah is a good lad. He did the washing up and helped me with the decorations and everything.”

Rhona raises her eyebrows. “Wow. Let me know if he’s ever free to come round and tidy my house.” She glances down, then back up, and Vanessa knows what’s coming. “And how’s Charity?”

“She’s…Charity.” She watches Rhona get up and pour the hot water into the mugs. “Accused me of having an ulterior motive for letting them stay.”

“Of course.” Rhona shakes her head. “Although maybe you do?” Her tone turns playful. “Remember when we played that game and you-“

“Yes, ok, and I don’t need reminding!” Vanessa blushes bright red.

It was months ago, a rare night when both her and Rhona were free of childcare and veterinary responsibilities, and they drank three bottles of wine, playing truth or dare. And Vanessa had confessed how much she’d been thinking about women lately, about possibly even going on dates with them.

Rhona had asked her if she could sleep with any woman in the village, based on looks alone, which one she would go for. Vanessa had been tipsy and Charity’s name had slipped out before she had a chance to filter it. Rhona teased her about if for weeks, even though Rhona had admitted to much more embarrassing things herself that night. Like her continued crush on Cain Dingle, for one.

“Just making sure you’ll be able to control yourself around her,” Rhona laughs, and Vanessa rolls her eyes very deliberately. 

“I think I’ll just about be ok,” she replies. “I mean, she’s hot and all, but the personality needs some serious work.”

*** 

Given that Charity took the boys to nursery in the morning, Vanessa messages her and asks if she wants Vanessa to pick Moses up along with Johnny later. She takes the string of thumbs up emojis as an affirmative.

It’s been harder, balancing work and childcare since her Dad died. He’d been so good at jumping in last minute, and in the last few months Vanessa’s had to beg the childminder on more than one occasion to keep Johnny longer when she’s been stuck on a farm somewhere.

Tracy’s been doing what she can, but she has her own job to worry about. Plus, things between the have been a strained, and it’s made Vanessa less willing to impose Johnny on Tracy at short notice.

She wonders how Charity copes, with the hours she works, and with Ross all the way in Liverpool. She always kind of assumed that the family helped out, but given that none of them would even let Charity and her kids stay with them for Christmas she’s now more doubtful of that.

Moses comes along with her with no fuss, chattering away, and Johnny joins in eagerly. It’s nice, how easy it is to make friends at that age. 

Noah comes home not long after they do, but he just says hello and then heads upstairs, and the boys play together, so Vanessa has some time to get dinner sorted. But hearing them pottering about together, and the faint sound of Noah’s music playing upstairs makes her smile. 

The house feels homey again, finally. Full of life.

It inspires her to actually go to some effort with dinner, and she makes bolognese, the smell of which summons even Noah from his room, looking hopeful. 

She should probably discuss with Charity what they’re going to do about cooking, because Vanessa is definitely _not_ going to cook for all of them all the time, but Noah’s eyes light up so much when she asks if he wants a plate that she can’t be annoyed. She even leaves a portion to the side for Charity in case she wants it later, even though she knows there’s a fair chance Charity will say something insulting in response. 

It’s after half six when there’s a banging on the door, and Vanessa frowns. She’s barely out of her seat when it happens again.

“Hold your horses,” she mutters, annoyed, but when she opens the door she’s confronted by a mattress. “What-“

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to help me?” Charity asks from somewhere behind it, and Vanessa steps to the side.

“What are you doing?” she asks. 

“Moses’ mattress,” Charity tells her. “Couldn’t be bothered carrying the whole bloody bed across the street, but we can put this on the floor in Noah’s room until Boxing Day when Ross comes to get him.”

Vanessa bites her lip, thinking quickly. “You can put it in Johnny’s room,” she says. 

Charity tilts her head. “It’s fine. Noah can suck it up.”

“Noah’s room is tiny,” Vanessa replies, proud that she only stumbles over the words _Noah’s room_ a little. “And he’s a teenager, he wants his own space.”

Charity hesitates. “Are you sure?”

Vanessa nods. “They’re getting on really well and honestly, I think Moses is good for Johnny.” She looks down. “He’s been really quiet since Dad…” She trails off, and bites her lip as she realises she’s left herself open to one of Charity’s super harsh comments.

But Charity’s eyes seem to soften, and she nods. “Yeah, ok then. Thanks.” She turns her head and bellows “Noah!” at the top of her lungs, making Vanessa flinch. “Smells good in here,” she remarks as they hear Noah grumble and plod to the stairs.

“There’s a plate for you too,” Vanessa replies, feeling suddenly silly.

But Charity looks at her in surprise. “Really?”

“What?” Noah asks, then his eyes widen at the mattress. “Is that going in with me?”

Charity gives Vanessa another look, then shakes her head. “You’ll be glad to know that Vanessa has volunteered Johnny to be Moses’ roommate.”

Noah gives her a genuine grin. “Thanks!”

Vanessa smiles back, scolding herself again for assuming that just be cause he walked around looking a bit glum all the time that he was going to be a nightmare. He’s had a tough year too, after all.

She watches the Dingles cart the mattress upstairs, flinching when it hits the photos at the side and makes them wobble, but they correct the angle and Vanessa hears them bickering all the way to the boys’ room.

They’re unexpected, these Dingles. But maybe not as hard to live with as she’d expected. 

*** 

“Don’t tell Marlon, or I’ll never hear the end of it, but your bolognese is better than his” Charity tells her from the table as she practically inhales the contents of her plate. 

Pleased, Vanessa pushes her hair behind her ear. She’s perched on the sofa, remote in hand. The boys are in bed – she helped Charity make up Moses’ bed and then Charity read them a story, doing hilarious voices that had them both squealing with laughter. 

Vanessa had stood in the door, transfixed. Somehow, despite having a lot of kids, the idea of Charity being a mother never entered her brain. Not like this. Not with bed times and helping her son get is pyjama top on the right way around and reading a story as they cuddled into their duvets.

It was odd, to see that different side of her. In a good way.

But now Vanessa feels kind of awkward again. She could just put the TV on, but it feels a bit rude. On the other hand, it’s not like they’re friends or anything, so what would they even talk about?

She’s still dithering when Charity lets out a groan. 

“What’s up?” Vanessa asks.

Charity reaches down and slips her boots off. Vanessa tries not to wince as she just drops them on the floor, trying not to think about the fact that Charity’s been walking them all over the house. Vanessa has a thing about shoes in the house. 

“Got a blister.” Charity bends down to pull her sock down and peer at her heel, wincing. “Bloody shoes are wearing through.”

Vanessa winces in sympathy. “You should get new ones.”

Charity glares at her. “Oh, wow, I hadn’t come up with that one myself!” she snaps. Then she wipes her hand across her forehead. “With the renovations we’re a bit short for cash, especially with Christmas, so it’s going to have to wait,” she says, softening her tone. 

Vanessa gets up and heads to the cupboard under the sink, pulling out the first aid kit. “You should clean it and put a blister plaster on it.” 

Charity takes the wipe and the plaster she hands her and pulls her foot up, but she glances at Vanessa so frequently that Vanessa begins getting self conscious. 

“What?” she asks. 

Charity looks back down at her heel, wincing as she presses the plaster down. “I just don’t get you.”

Vanessa crosses her arms. “What do you mean?” It comes out slightly defensively, and Charity laughs in response, which makes her stand up straighter.

“You just…” Charity shakes her head. “I snap at you and you get me a plaster.”

Vanessa frowns. “Sorry, would you like me to argue with you instead?”

Charity shakes her head. “You’re just not what I expected, that’s all.” That’s so close to what Vanessa had thought about Charity only minutes before, it takes her by surprise and she closes her mouth. 

They look at each other for a moment, and then Charity pulls up her shoulders. “I’ll get out of your hair,” she says.

“You can sit and watch TV with me, if you like,” Vanessa blurts out. That seems to be a thing she’s doing a lot of recently. “I just mean, you don’t have to hide away in your room on my account.”

Charity shrugs, but the corners of her mouth quirk, and Vanessa can tell she’s pleased. “Yeah, alright then.” She turns and fills the kettle. “But no stupid reality TV shows.”

“Deal.”

*** 

“You watched TV together?” Rhona asks incredulously over Mr Finch’s unconscious Siamese the next day.

“Yeah.” Vanessa places the last stitch and gestures to the dressing in Rhona’s hand. “Midsomer Murders.”

Rhona’s eyes widen comically. “You watched Midsomer Murders with Charity Dingle?”

“Yeah.” Vanessa applies the dressing gently. “I said that I always wonder why anyone would move to Midsomer with all them murders, but then she pointed out that Emmerdale’s had its fair share of those as well.”

Rhona bites her lip. “Sounds like you guys had a good time.”

“Well, I mean, it wasn’t as awkward as I thought it was going to be.” Vanessa checks the edges of the bandage, nodding to herself in satisfaction. “She’s actually quite funny, Charity is.” She gently strokes Mr Whiskers. “There, there. Nearly done now.”

For a moment, Rhona looks like she wants to keep up their conversation, but then Jamie enters, looking ruffled. “That poodle is a menace,” he complains, pulling off his gloves..

Vanessa laughs. “Why do you think we gave him to you to deal with?”

*** 

December trundles on, and Vanessa gets slowly used to her new house guests. They’re a little messy: Charity still trudges through the house with her boots on, and when Vanessa points it out she seems to find it hilarious (although she does then take them off), and Noah spends a lot of time in his room, but it’s getting steadily less awkward having them around. 

It helps, having the house full. It makes it hurt a little less that she hasn’t really heard much from Tracy. They text, and one afternoon Tracy takes Johnny to the cinema, but they didn’t have tea together after like they normally do.

Vanessa’s not sure if it’s the Dad thing or the Pete thing or a combination of both, but every conversation between them is strained at the moment. And it hurts. She feels like shes not only lost her Dad but her sister as well. And with her Mum only really calling her on her birthday and Christmas, it’s like she’s got no family at all. 

She doesn’t complain about it though, because it seems that Charity is having an even harder time with family than Vanessa is. To be honest, Vanessa had half anticipated her house being full of Dingles coming and going all December, but not one has been round to see them, not even Debbie. 

With that in mind, and determined to get everyone in the Christmas mood, Vanessa comes up with a plan.

“It’s the Christmas lights turn on tonight,” Vanessa announces at breakfast as she butters Johnny’s toast. 

Moses and Johnny immediately squeal with glee. 

“I’m going to take Johnny. Do you guys want to come?”

“Yes!” Moses calls, slapping his piece of toast off his plate with gusto. 

Noah winces. “I’m alright.” 

“Not even if we bribe you with hot chocolate?” Vanessa knows its normal for teenagers to spend a lot of time in the house these days, but she still feels it would be good for him to get some air. 

“Er, who is this ‘we’?” Charity asks, looking up from her phone.

Vanessa grins at her. “Me and you, of course.”

“Oh, no.” Charity shakes her head. “I’m not really much of a Christmassy person.”

“I’m shocked.” Vanessa smirks. “But you’re still coming.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Charity retorts, narrowing her eyes. 

Noah snorts. “She kind of is at the minute.” He looks pointedly at the slippers Charity is wearing instead of her boots.

“Excuse me, mister!” Charity looks outraged. “You take that back!”

“I just think it might be a nice thing to do for the kids?” Vanessa tilts her head. “Since you want to make it a perfect Christmas and all.” 

Charity sighs and Vanessa knows she’s won. 

She feels slightly bad about the emotional blackmail, but not bad enough to let her off the hook. She really, really hates being in big village crowds alone at the minute. Someone near her always starts talking about her Dad, deliberately so she can hear she’s sure, and if Charity is there there will at least be a distraction.

She’d normally have asked Tracy, but she mentioned over text that she was going with Pete.

Looks like everything is different this year. 

*** 

“It’s bloody freezing,” Charity complains, shifting from foot to foot. 

Vanessa rolls her eyes. “Why don’t you go back in then and get another jumper?” 

Charity shakes her head. “And miss the bloomin’ turn on after freezing my nip-“

“Charity!”

“-my butt off for ages?”

Vanessa pulls her scarf up to hide her smile. She’s been smiling a lot lately, she’s notices. Charity is _funny_. Dramatic as hell, but hilarious. 

“You can borrow my gloves,” Johnny tells Charity, holding one of his mittens out to her.

Charity bends down to his level. “Aww, thanks Johnnybobs.” She makes a big show of trying to get her hand in the tiny mitten and looking confused when it doesn’t work, and both Moses and Johnny roar with laughter.

“What’s she up to?” Noah asks, appearing beside her, and Vanessa jumps.

“Thought you were too cool for this?” she teases him as she turns to face him.

He shrugs, but the tips of his ears are pink. “Well, I was on my way home and it is right outside the house I suppose.”

Vanessa nods knowingly. “Mmh hmm.” 

They stand side by side, watching Kim Tate walk up to the podium and start the count down, and when the boys actually gasp out loud when the light come on, despite being the same as they are every year, they exchange a grin. 

Vanessa’s just about to suggest they head to the café for hot chocolates, when she spots Tracy in the crowd with Pete. Her face is blank as Vanessa catches her eye, and Vanessa sighs. She recognises that look. Has been seeing it an awful lot, recently. 

“Can you watch Johnny for a second?” she asks Charity, and when she nods, Vanessa heads over to them.

Pete excuses himself, giving her a nod, and Tracy shoves her hands in her pockets.

“See you’re here with your new pals.”

Already feeling defensive, Vanessa shrugs. “Well, not like you wanted to come with us.”

“Listen,” Tracy starts, and something in her tone puts Vanessa on edge. “Pete’s asked if I want to come to Liverpool with him for Christmas, and I think I’m going to do it.”

Vanessa freezes. “But…it’s our first Christmas without Dad!”

Tracy nods. “I know. And I don’t want to spend the day fighting with you about it.”

Feeling her throat clogging up, Vanessa swallows hard. “Right. So what do you want me to tell Johnny, then?”

“I don’t know, Vee.” Tracy raises her voice a little. “Maybe that his mum thinks that his grandpa was a thief and that his auntie doesn’t want to hear about that on Christmas?”

“Tracy!” Vanessa’s mouth drops open in shock. She thought they were starting to put this behind them, but she was obviously wrong. “I _loved_ Dad, so much.”

“Yeah, but apparently not enough to believe in him, eh?” Tracy’s chin wobbles, but the she squares her shoulders. “Have fun with your new friends.”

Vanessa takes a deep breath, clenching her jaw at the unfairness of it all. She tries to steady herself, tries to keep the tears in. 

“You ready?” Charity asks from behind her. “Only the little monsters are about to stage a mutiny if they don’t get their hot chocolates.” 

“Yeah,” Vanessa tries brightly, but her voice sounds thick even to her own ears, and she clears her throat.

Charity moves around her so they’re facing each other. “What’s wrong?”

Wiping at her eyes quickly, Vanessa shakes her head and pastes on a smile. “Nothing!”

Charity frowns, then leans around her. “Change of plans,” she announces to the boys. “We’re going to make the best ever hot chocolates at home.”

“We can go to the café,” Vanessa says. “I’m fine.” Except as she says it, she blinks a little too hard, and water leaks out of her eyes, and the delicate hold she has on herself starts to crumble.

“Is she ok?” she hears a worried sounding Noah ask Charity. Vanessa presses a hand to her mouth to keep her sobs in. People are already starting to look at her.

Why is this happening now? For weeks she’s been trying to have a good cry, in the privacy of her bedroom, and now it all comes out on the street?

“Go inside,” Charity tells her softly. “Take a minute. I’ll get them sorted.”

“I, I,” she hiccups, but Charity shakes her head. 

“Go on.” 

*** 

When she comes downstairs twenty minutes later, all cried out, face washed, and with a banging headache, the boys have big, chocolatey moustaches and are running around the living room while a laughing Noah tries to catch them to wipe their mouths.

He stops awkwardly when he sees her, hesitating, but his mother beats him to it.

“Alright?” Charity asks her, pushing a mug towards her. “Made you one too. I made it last so it shouldn’t be too cold.”

Vanessa nods in thanks. “Sorry,” she says, feeling pretty mortified.

“Do you want to take the boys upstairs for a minute?” Charity asks Noah, and he nods.

Vanessa lets out an embarrassed laugh. “Wow, I must really have hit a low point if even you are feeling sorry for me now.”

“Ouch.” Charity grins a her though, and Vanessa knows she’s not really offended. “I mean, I was going to offer talking about it, but if you’re going to be all mean-“

“Sorry.” Vanessa sinks onto the chair at the end of the table and pulls the mug towards herself. “Tracy wants to spend Christmas in Liverpool with Pete and Ross.”

Charity raises her eyebrows. “Oh.”

“She’s mad at me, because of Dad.” Vanessa shakes her head. “Because I said that he might have…that there’s a chance…”

“Tracy still thinks he didn’t do it?” Charity asks, and Vanessa nods.

“The thing is,” she says, so softly it’s almost a whisper. “I don’t know if he did do it or not. And I don’t really care, anymore.” She takes a sip; it’s very chocolatey, much more than when she makes it herself. It’s delicious though, exactly what she needs. “Because regardless of whether he did nor not, he was still my dad. He was still Johnny’s grandpa.” Having to explain to her son why his grandpa Frank wasn’t coming back was one of the hardest experiences of her life. “And I miss him”.

Her voice cracks on the last words, and she covers her eyes. It seems now she’s started she can’t stop. 

“Hey.” Charity’s voice is soft, the softest Vanessa has ever heard it.

“Sorry.” Vanessa draws in a shuddering breath. “I think it’s just getting to me, all this Christmas stuff. Dad loved that stuff.”

Charity looks down for a beat. “I get that,” she says quietly. “Christmas isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

Vanessa lets out a wet laugh. “Not really, no.” It’s weird, this sharing thing. But not bad, not necessarily. Just unexpected. “You know how you asked me why I invited you guys to stay?” She doesn’t know why she feels the need to share this, but it seems important somehow. 

Charity nods.

“I think part of it was not wanting to be alone.” She shakes her head. “God, how pathetic is that?”

Charity shrugs. “Well, if you hadn’t, we would have been homeless, since my disloyal family wouldn’t take us in, which is pretty pathetic as well if you ask me.”

“Fair point.” Vanessa smiles at her a little and when Charity smiles back, it feels like they’re sharing a secret. “So…” She trails off, then decides to ask after all. “What are you guys doing for Christmas?”

Charity’s eyes drop down. “I’m not sure.” She picks at a hangnail on her thumb. “Was supposed to be going up to Wishing Well but…”

Vanessa hesitates. She’s been careful not to ask, not to push. It’s none of her business, really, what’s going on with the Dingles. She already feels kind of uncomfortable with the stuff she does know from Pearl. 

But Charity is staring at her mug, looking utterly forlorn, and it’s what Vanessa would do with anyone else.

“Do you want to…I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but…”

Charity lets out a brittle laugh. “Have you got all night? Because some of this argument goes back about thirty years.” She’s still looking down. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard all about it from the village rumour mill.”

Vanessa shrugs; she can’t deny it. “I don’t believe everything I hear.”

There’s a pause, for a moment, and Vanessa thinks the conversation is over. She’s oddly disappointed. The glimpses of the real Charity, buried all the under bravado and prickliness, draw her in. She was hoping to see more.

But then Charity sits up a little, although she still doesn’t make eye contact.

“I thought he had died,” she says quietly, without preamble. “I know people don’t believe me. Hell, half my family doesn’t believe me. But I thought he was dead, when I left the hospital.”

Vanessa doesn’t need to ask who she means. Everyone knew, in the summer, when a young man showed up in the Woolpack and announced to the collective of Dingles that he was Charity’s son. 

“I’m so sorry.” Vanessa shakes her head. “That must have been awful.” She knows, what it’s like, when a child is so sick you don’t know if they’ll make it. Even if at the time she was so numb that she hardly felt anything about it at all. “You must have been so young.”

“Fourteen.” Charity clears her throat, but it doesn’t quite cover up Vanessa’s horrified gasp. She looks up at the sound, and quirks her lip sardonically. “Did the rumour mill miss that detail out?”

“Charity,” Vanessa says softly. “God, I had no idea-“

“No,” Charity agrees. “No one did.” She lets out a laugh but it’s not a happy sound. “Turns out when you kick a thirteen year old out into the street they have to find a way to survive.”

Vanessa feels her eyes filling up again but she digs her nails into her palms and swallows hard. Her crying right now is not helpful to Charity. Even though her heart breaks for her.

“Is that…is he why your family…”

Charity shrugs. “Debbie doesn’t believe that I didn’t know he was still alive. And she’s angry I didn’t tell her about the pregnancy.” She shakes her head, clearly trying to pretend she’s not bothered but her eyes are shimmering. “The rest of them…there was an argument. About a job Cain pulled.” She shakes her head, and an angry spark reappears in her eyes. “He was supposed to be looking after Moses and got him kidnapped.”

Vanessa’s mouth falls open. “He _what_?” She feels her eyes go wild. “Is he ok? Did you call the police?”

Charity laughs, and it sounds mostly genuine. “This is why you’ll never be a Dingle. We don’t call the police.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes. “But Moses is ok? You’re ok?”

Charity looks at her, like she’s surprised that she asked. “Yeah, he’s fine now. Was bloody terrified for days after though.”

Vanessa shakes her head. “You must have been so scared.”

“It was one of the worst hours of my life.” Charity twists her fingers into her long curls. It’s a tick Vanessa has noticed her doing often when she’s on edge.

Vanessa bites her lip, then decides to push a little more. “So they’re taking his side?”

Nodding, Charity shrugs. “Apparently because Moira cheated on him, he can do no wrong. But it’s always been the same. Everyone always takes his side.” She looks down again. “Debbie always takes his side.”

Not for the first time this month, Vanessa feels her mental picture of Charity Dingle readjusting. So often, she’s heard people talking about her, gossiping about her. And everything is always her fault. She’s the butt of jokes, she’s the snappy punch line. 

But all Vanessa sees now is a misunderstood, complicated, unhappy woman, who’s been shafted by life. 

She can anticipate how Charity would react to any sort of pity or sympathy, though. So she doesn’t give her any of that. 

Instead, she says “I make a pretty good turkey.”

Charity looks up.

“Ordered it months ago. Should be plenty of you want to join me and Johnny?”

Tilting her head, Charity says “I’d ask if this was a pity invite, but last time I questioned your motives you stormed off, so…”

“It’s not pity.” She exhales slowly, encourage by the way Charity hasn’t recoiled in horror. “I just thought it might be nice?”

“I think you might be the first person ever to say that about me and my kids.”

“You’re not so bad.” Vanessa winks at her. “Even if you wear your shoes through the house.”

Charity sighs loudly as she kicks them off, but she’s laughing as well as she does it.

A Christmas with Charity and her kids doesn’t seem so bad, really. It actually seems like it might be kind of fun.

“Want to go watch one of those cheesy Netflix Christmas films and make fun of it?”

She’s not expecting a yes, but Charity looks at the ceiling as if she’s extremely put out and says “Go on then,” as if it’s being dragged out of her, and Vanessa grins, going to the cupboard to get the popcorn.

Despite the argument with Tracy, despite the ache about her Dad, it feels like tonight might be a good night after all.

***

“And you’re sure you don’t mind?” Vanessa asks for the fifth time on Thursday, calling through the open door of her bedroom to the bathroom where Charity has just finished towelling off Moses. “It’s your night off.”

“And they’re four, their bed time is eight o’clock. I’ll still have plenty of time to laze about.”

Vanessa wonders what Charity does on her nights off, when she’s back home at the pub. Before Charity moved in, she would never have pegged her as a reader. But when Vanessa was bringing her some washing the other day she saw two paperbacks beside Charity’s bed. Still, Vanessa has trouble imagining her sitting in her pyjamas and reading a book. Charity’s always so active, so on edge, and that image is almost too peaceful for her.

“Wow, don’t you scrub up nice,” Charity says, her voice suddenly close as she appears in the doorway.

Vanessa tugs self consciously at the bottom of her dress. “Is it too short? Be honest.”

“I’m always honest.” Charity winks as she says it, and something about that wink makes Vanessa palms go clammy. She wishes she was that effortlessly sexy, that easily alluring. 

Instead she has the sex appeal of a pair of socks.

“You look fine,” Charity tells her, looking her up and down in a way which makes the back of Vanessa’s neck tingle. “But you need jewellery.”

Sighing, Vanessa peers into her jewellery box. “I know, but everything I’ve got is silver and this needs gold.” The dress she’s wearing is black velvet with a shimmering gold pattern. It’s short but it has long sleeves, so she doesn’t feel too exposed. But there’s quite a bit of cleavage going on, and she hasn’t been out in forever, and her shoes are already pinching.

Rhona had told her to ‘make an effort’. They’re going into Hotten for their party and everything, instead of just having a few pints at the pop up bar at the hall. All part of Rhona’s campaign to get her some action, for once.

Vanessa had shushed her, because the last thing she needs is Rhona telling Jamie and Belle exactly how long it’s been since she’s had any.

But now, wedged into this dress and already starting to sweat, she kind of wishes she could just stay home. She hates going out when she’s the only single one, it’s so depressing.

“Here,” Charity says, reappearing beside her, and holding out her hand. “Wear this.”

It’s a gold chain, with a beautiful leaf pendant on it. “The kids got me it last year for Christmas.” 

“Oh, no, Charity, I couldn’t…”

Charity ignores her, unclasping the chain and reaching around her.

“Lift your hair,” she commands, and Vanessa finds herself obeying as if in a trance, pulling up her hairsprayed curls and letting Charity pull the cold chain around her neck.

The pendant hangs just right, just about the line of the dress, and Charity nods in satisfaction when she’s done. 

Vanessa looks up from the pendant to Charity’s face in the mirror. “Thank you,” she says softly, and something changes on Charity’s face, but then the front door slams and the moment is shattered.

“Ness?” Rhona calls from downstairs. “You ready? Taxi’s here!”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Charity jokes, and Vanessa feels a weird urge to ask her to come.

Which she obviously can’t, because she’s babysitting. But still. It feels weird, to be going without her. They’ve spent pretty much every night Charity hasn’t been working watching TV together, or talking over hot chocolates.

Like an old married couple, Rhona had mocked.

“So that leaves pretty much only staying sober that I can’t do?” Vanessa jokes, trying to put on a smile like she’s excited to bring out.

And hey, who knows. Maybe she will meet someone.

“Ouch,” Charity replies, but she grins, pleased at the banter. “Off you go  
then.”

“Text me if there’s any problems,” Vanessa says firmly. “Even if he’s just a bit fussy or you can’t get him down or-“

“Go!” Charity says at the same time as Rhona calls “Ness!” again, and so she gives up and delicately clambers down the stairs in her heels.

***  
Hours later, it’s an effort to drag herself into an upright position when the taxi pulls up outside her door.

“Keep the change,” she tells the driver, grabbing the shoes she’d taken off in the taxi and slipping out, hurrying to the front door. She manages to get her key inside on the third go, and curses quietly, dropping her shoes in a heap that she would have told Tracy off for. She’s not drunk, but she’s on the drunk side of tipsy, and she wishes she’d followed her impulse to get chips and cheese before she got the taxi.

She drops her bag too, and then jumps, because Charity is still awake, curled up on the sofa and watching something on very low volume.

“Look who’s back,” she says, sitting up. “Have a good time?”

Vanessa shrugs. These nights out are always so built up in everyone’s head, and the reality is always disappointing.

“Food was good,” she mumbles, proud that she’s only slurring a little bit. “But then Rhona wanted us to go to a _club_.”

“Oh yeah?” Charity leans forward a little.

Vanessa sighs, perching on the arm of the sofa. “Everyone was so _young_. And then Belle and Paddy and Jamie went home and the DJ kept playing Madonna and all the drinks were pink-“

“Where was this?” Charity wrinkles her nose.

Vanessa squints; the room is spinning slightly. “Grind.”

Charity looks surprised. “The gay club?” 

“Everyone was so _young_.” Vanessa feels like she might have said that before but it bears repeating. She’d felt invisible, in her too-short dress. All the women had looked right through her, like she didn’t even exist. “Rhona was all, ‘you’ll pull dead easily’, but no one in their right mind wants a single mum on the wrong side of forty with ‘desperate’ written all over her, do they?”

Charity tilts her head, giving Vanessa another one of her searching, unreadable looks. “Didn’t know you were that way inclined?”

Vanessa raises her eyebrows. “Don’t lie. We both know how much everyone talks in the village.”

Charity shrugs. “I don’t believe everything I hear,” she repeats Vanessa’s words back to her.

Vanessa closes her eyes; the room spins a little again and she really wants to know what was in those pink drinks. She should really know better than to drink anything served in test tubes.

“Doesn’t matter anyway.” She looks down at her feet, where her big toe is poking a hole into her tights. “Women have exactly as much interest in me as men. Zero.”

“Can I give you some advice?” Charity asks.

Shrugging, she leans forward. “Go right ahead. I can use all the help I can get.”

“Self pity isn’t a good look on you.” Charity picks up her mug which is resting on the coffee table and takes a sip. “You’re better than that.”

Vanessa lets out a bitter snort. “I wish.” She gets up and walks over to where she dropped her bag, opening it. “Look at this.”

Initially she’d found the hat funny, with the mistletoe dangling off the front, but as the night wore on and she drank more and got increasingly maudlin, it became a depressing symbol of her spinsterhood.

“I’m so pathetic that I can’t even get a snog on a night when half of Yorkshire is out at Christmas parties, and everyone’s drunk and ready to party, and I’m literally wearing mistletoe.” She staggers towards the stairs. “I get ditched by my best friend so she can shag her creepy new boyfriend, I chickened out of talking to the only woman who looked at me all night, and now I’m spilling my guts to you, so you now know how pathetic I am.” She tilts her head, feeling close to tears. “If I told you how long it’s been since someone even kissed me…”

“Wow,” Charity replies. “I’ve seen a lot of dramatic meltdowns in the pub at closing time, but this is starting to take the biscuit.” She shakes her head. “Seriously, you need to put a sock in the self pity.” She gestures at Vanessa. “You scrub up nice, you have a proper job, and your kid has manners like the queen. You probably didn’t pull because you spend half your life scowling with that little line between your eyes.”

Vanessa automatically reaches up to feel the area. Another thing to worry about. 

“And as for the other thing…” Charity steps closer, biting her lip for a minute, and then she’s cupping Vanessa’s face and pressing her lips to Vanessa’s, and Vanessa tastes the sharpness of the earl grey and a sweetness as well, and her eyes flutter shut and she’s kissing back and their mouths open slightly and…

“Good night, Vanessa,” Charity whispers softly, still holding her face gently, and then she walks past her and up the stairs like she didn’t just lay a kiss on Vanessa that turned her legs to jelly.

*** 

The next day brings a hangover so intense that it takes Vanessa three attempts to get into an upright position. 

The room spins a little and her head throbs intensely, but the sick feeling slowly recedes and she groans as she pulls herself up against the headboard.

She’s too old for this. Too old for dancing in shoes she can barely walk in and for pink shots and for waking up and realising she forgot to brush her teeth.

And for flashbacks of spontaneous kisses, the memory of which make her blush bright red. She’s mortified when she remembers how she rambled on, to Rhona and then the taxi driver and then to Charity…

The problem with living with Charity is that this ridiculous crush is getting a bit out of control. Instead of just seeing her at the bar and appreciating the way her hair falls or the way her top hugs her curves just right, she’s now seeing new parts of Charity. The soft parts, like Charity with a cup of tea in her pyjamas. Charity, bouncing Moses on her lap. Charity, doing the washing up wearing Vanessa’s marigolds.

And now, Charity, leaning in and planting a kiss on her, which makes pretending the crush isn’t there much, much harder.

The fact that Vanessa hasn’t been laid in eons doesn’t help, of course. But ever since she woke up, all she can think about what I might be like to do it again. Kiss her again.

She’s also, frankly, mortified at the way she went on. Nothing is more unattractive than someone lamenting that they can’t get any action, and yet that’s exactly what she did, repeatedly. 

Charity probably thinks this is hilarious.

Vanessa has to brace herself coming down the stairs, not sure whether the sick feeling is all hangover or also partially anxiety over what Charity might say.

She’s both relieved and disappointed to see that the only person in the kitchen is Noah. 

“Don’t you have school?” she asks, her voice coming out raspy.

He looks at her and smirks. “Bus broke down so Sam’s giving me and Samson a lift.” He pushes a glass of water along the table. “Mum said to give you this and this.” He holds out some paracetamol.

“Bless you.” Vanessa reaches for both. “Never drink.”

He laughs. “Did you have fun?”

Vanessa clenches her finger nails into her palms. “Mmh hmm.” She really hopes she’s not blushing.

A car honks outside, and he gets up. “Hope you don’t feel too bad,” he calls back at her.

Vanessa winces at the sound of the door closing.

This is going to be a long day.

*** 

She sways all day between wanting to tell Rhona what happened, and wanting to pretend like it didn’t. 

She spends the morning squinting at paperwork and trying not to visibly wince every time the phone goes. It’s not fair, that Rhona and Jamie had at least as many shots as she did, and neither of them look or presumably feel like reheated scrambled eggs. 

Around lunch time, when the room has managed to stay fixed and not spinning for fifteen consecutive minutes, Vanessa decides shes ready for some food. 

Rhona, bless her, volunteers to go to the café to pick them up some paninis, while Jamie heads out to have lunch with Andrea. 

Vanessa sinks down in the chair at reception, massaging her throbbing temples and rooting around in the drawers for some more pain killers. 

The door opens and she without looking up she says “Thank god, I need melted cheese right now.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

Vanessa jerks up and out of the chair so fast that she bangs her knee on the desk, and curses loudly.

She makes eye contact with Charity and then wishes she hadn’t, because Charity looks, frankly, incredible, with her soft curls glowing in the winter sun and her coat undone, showing a low-cut black shirt underneath. 

Vanessa gulps. This is not good.

“Just wanted to check you were still alive, and can pick the boys up from nursery later.” 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Vanessa clears her throat, looking down at the desk and starts pretending to tidy, shuffling papers around. “I mean, I’ve felt better but I’m getting there.” 

Charity takes a step closer and Vanessa grabs the edge of the desk to stop herself from moving backwards in response. Charity’s still several steps away, but somehow her perfume still reaches Vanessa’s nose, maybe because she knows _exactly_ what it smells like up close now, and it’s making it difficult to think.

“I, erm, I’m sorry about last night,” Vanessa says quickly, before Charity can say anything. “About being so pathetic, I mean.”

Charity shrugs. “I’ve seen worse, don’t worry.”

Vanessa nods. _Grow a pair_ she tells herself. “And, erm, about the other thing…”

Charity raises an eyebrow. “What other thing?”

Heat starts to rise in Vanessa’s cheeks. “You know!” she hisses. “The _kiss_.” She practically whispers the last word. 

“Oh yeah!” Charity takes another step forward, and now shes so close Vanessa can see a little speck of lint on her dark jacket. The urge to pick it off, then pull Charity close by the lapel is increasingly strong. “Our little tongue twister!”

Vanessa knows for a fact she must be properly blushing now. “I hope you didn’t… I mean, I know I was a pathetic mess but you didn’t feel like you had to-“

Charity laughs a little at that. “Don’t worry,” she smirks. “You didn’t force me to do anything.”

Vanessa nod. She’d known that, she had, but looking back on it sober, she had worried that the mistletoe thing seemed a bit pathetic and desperate. And manipulative. 

“And hey, don’t worry.” Charity leans forward, and Vanessa thinks her heart might be reaching maximum beats per minute, it’s hammering so hard in her chest. “Way better snog than your dad!”

It’s like Charity has poured cold water over her head. 

Vanessa snaps back, stumbling slightly as the back of her legs hit the desk chair. 

She sees Charity’s eyes go wide, as if she maybe hadn’t considered fully what she’s said, but all Vanessa can see is red.

“So that’s it, is it?” She crosses her arms. “You’re going to use this against me like you did him?” 

Charity shakes her head. “Vanessa, I didn’t mean-“

“You know what?” Vanessa snaps, feeling suddenly close to tears. “Just go.” She shakes her head. “Everything is a joke to you, isn’t it? Well , I have news for you, Charity.” She steps forward. “I’m not interested in being your punch line.” 

Charity opens her mouth again, straightening as if to argue, but the front door swings open and Rhona walks in, holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a cardboard tray with coffees in the other. 

She pauses when she sees Charity, and Vanessa assumes the tense atmosphere must be obvious. 

“Am I interrupting?” she asks. 

Charity says “Yes,” as Vanessa says “No.” 

Vanessa clears her throat and looks down at her shoes, trying to swallow her humiliation and disappointment. “Charity was just leaving,” she says as firmly as she can manage, and takes a deep breath as Charity sighs and turns around. 

She pauses at the door, but Vanessa doesn’t look up, and Charity leaves.

“What was that about?” Rhona asks. 

“Absolutely nothing,” Vanessa lies, grabbing her turkey, cranberry and Brie panini and biting into it with gusto.

*** 

She’s holding both boys’ hands as they walk home, and although Vanessa isn’t exactly the tallest, she still has to squat down a little, and so she doesn’t see the figure perched on the doorstep until they’re at the gate.

The boys hesitate, and Vanessa instinctively stands in front of them as the stranger gets to his feet. 

He looks oddly familiar, with his distinctive long hair, and when he gets unsteadily to his feet, Vanessa realises with a gasp exactly who he is. 

“Are you Vanessa?” he asks. 

She nods wordlessly. 

“I’m Ryan. Charity’s son.”

***  
She knows she’s babbling. She does that, when she’s nervous. She talks all the way through making him a cup of tea and offering him biscuits he had already said he didn’t want, and cutting up an apple and some grapes for the boys, who are shyly hiding behind the colourful armchair.

Ryan doesn’t give her much to work with. He’s polite though, complimenting the house and the decorations.

Every minute that passes since she sent the message to Charity feels like an hour. She has the desperate urge to pop down to the hall to get her, but it’s not like she can leave the boys with him, and the idea of wrangling them back into their shoes and boots is a nightmare.

The door opens, and everyone turns hopefully at the sound. “It’s snowing,” Noah’s voice tells them, and Vanessa’s shoulders sag.

He comes through from the small vestibule and stops short. His bright, open face transforms into something so dark and stormy that it catches Vanessa’s breath for a minute. 

“What is _he_ doing here?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Johnny cower at the tone of Noah’s voice. 

“Ryan‘s come for a visit with your mum,” Vanessa says as faux-brightly as she can manage. 

Noah steps closer, crossing his arms. “You need to go,” he tells Ryan firmly. 

“Noah!” 

But he doesn’t pay any attention to her, continuing to glare at Ryan.

“I know you don’t like me,” Ryan says, “but I _am_ your brother, and-“

“No you’re not.” Noah shakes his head and turns to Vanessa. “He needs to go. Before Mum gets home.”

“I’m not going to just kick him out, Noah.” Vanessa tries to go for a gentle, appeasing tone. “I’ve messaged your mum, she’ll be here soon-“

Noah shakes his head. His whole body is tense, like a tightly wound spring. She feels like one wrong move, one wrong word might set him off. “No!” he shouts. “He’ll only upset her again, like last time!”

The front door opens again, and Vanessa knows this time that it’s Charity; she’s become used to the way she sounds coming home, the way she always puts the key in the wrong way first time, and always stubs her toe on the boot cleaner.

“Vanessa?” she calls, sounding anxious. When she comes in and sees Ryan sitting there, she stops short, twisting her hands firmly around the sides of her coat like she needs something to hold onto. 

Vanessa did say that he was here in the message, but from the look on her face it doesn’t quite seem like Charity believed it.

Charity shakes her hair, which has little white snowflakes all over it. “Ryan,” she says, and her voice is so fragile that despite what happened earlier, Vanessa’s heart clenches at the sound.

“I told him to go,” Noah tells her. 

“It’s ok,” Charity says, voice raspy and barely above a whisper. “It’s ok. We can talk.”

Noah shakes his head, looking at her incredulously. “He’ll only upset you again!”

But Charity can’t seem to take her glistening eyes off Ryan, and Noah throws up his hands in frustration and storms up the stairs.

Vanessa looks from Charity to Ryan and realises they could probably use some time alone.

“Right, boys,” Vanessa says brightly. “Who wants to go upstairs and listen to a Christmas story?”

“Me, me, me!” Moses shouts, bounding for the stairs, while Johnny shuffles over to her and puts his little hand in hers.

He doesn’t like conflict of any sort, never has, and he’s sucking his thumb again for comfort. 

She sighs and bends down to pick him up, cuddling him gently. He’s getting heavier every day, and soon she won’t be able to manage this.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she hears Charity say, in that fragile, vulnerable tone again, and she hurries the boys up the stairs. This is private.

*** 

She’s got through twenty pages of a children’s version of A Christmas Carol when she hears the front door slam loudly.

She sets the book down and leave the boys playing for a minute, stepping onto the landing.

Noah comes out as well, his face drawn.

“Mum’s gone,” he says, and although his voice is harsh it wobbles a little.

Vanessa sighs. “Watch the boys for a minute, yeah?”

He stares at her. “Are you doing after her?” 

“Well, yeah.”

He gives her an unreadable look that is so like the expression Charity gets sometimes it takes her by surprise, then nods.

She wonders whether one day, Johnny will be as undeniably her son in terms of mannerisms as Noah is Charity’s.

When she gets down the stairs, she sees Ryan pulling on his coat.

“What happened?” she asks.

He shrugs. “My mum warned me this was a bad idea. That Charity couldn’t give me what I wanted.”

Vanessa sighs. “Look, I don’t know you, and I don’t know what happened. But you keep appearing without giving her any warning. So don’t be too harsh on her, ok?”

He pauses, his arm half in his jacket.

“I know this must be really confusing for you, but it’s confusing for her too.” Vanessa kind of feels like she’s overstepping, but it’s almost Christmas, and there’s a _chance_ for Charity to make up with at least one of her kids. “Look, just wait here, ok? Just for a bit.” She grabs her coat from the hook, then sees that Charity’s is still hanging there. She must be freezing. “I’ll go find her. Just stay here for a minute.”

To her surprise, he sinks back onto the sofa. 

Now she only needs to go find Charity.

*** 

Charity’s not gone far, in the end. She’s perched on one of the swings in the playground, fingers tightly wrapped around the chains.

She’s not paying any attention to the snow falling around her or the fact that she’s not wearing a coat. She’s just staring straight ahead, her eyes dark and empty.

“You’ll freeze out here,” Vanessa says as she approaches so she doesn’t startle her, and holds out the coat. 

Charity scrapes her foot along the ground. “Survived worse weather with less clothes before.”

Vanessa doesn’t really know how to respond to that. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, what she knows Charity has had to suffer through. She doesn’t know the details, but even the highlights are beyond Vanessa’s comprehension. Every little problem, every bad event in her own life pales in comparison to what she knows Charity went through for years.

Instead of saying something, she approaches slowly, holding out the coat so Charity knows what she’s going to do, and wraps it around her shoulders.

“Come to play therapist?” Charity snaps. She puts her head down as she says it though, which tells Vanessa that her heart isn’t in a fight.

“Come to see if you’re ok.”

“Now there’s a question.” Charity rocks her hips a little, so that the swing starts to move.

Vanessa lowers herself onto the swing next to her. “I can ask him to leave, if you like?”

Charity turns her head in surprise. “He’s still there?”

Vanessa bites her lip, feeling sheepish. “I asked him to stay, just until I had found you. I wanted to make sure you actually wanted him to go.” 

Charity stares at her for a minute, and then the smallest of smiles curls the edge of her mouth. “You really are something else, you know that?” 

It could easily have been meant as an insult, but it comes out soft and warm, and Vanessa feels her cheeks heating up.

They sit in silence for a while, and Vanessa starts swinging too, if only to try and warm her feet which she shoved into trainers rather than her warm boots in her hurry to leave the house.

She watches the snow flurry around them, settling on the grass until only the very tips of the blades can be seen.

“He wants to know who his father is,” Charity says inti the silence.

Vanessa stops mid swing, but doesn’t reply. She’s come to realise that Charity finds it easier to talk about stuff if she doesn’t push, if she just sits and lets it come out.

“You know, you never asked me about the father.” Charity turns to her. “That’s the first thing everyone else asked me.”

Vanessa hesitates. The truth is that she didn’t ask because she assumed that Charity maybe didn’t know. She knows, after all, what Charity had to do to survive on the streets.

Charity must read it on her face. “It wasn’t a John, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Vanessa flinches guiltily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed-“

“No, it was a fair assumption.” Charity chuckles bitterly. “Would have been easier if it was.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Vanessa looks straight ahead, starting to swing again. “But if you want to, you can.”

Charity makes a strange noise, and when Vanessa turns, she’s horrified to realise that she’s crying, a hand pressed to her mouth.

“Charity!” She gets up off the swing before she can think better of it, and crouches in front of her. 

“You don’t want to know.” Charity chokes the words out like they’re poisonous, like it hurts to say them.

Vanessa reaches out slowly and takes Charity’s cold fingers, the ones that aren’t pressed against her lips to contain her sobs, in her hands. “I do if you want to tell me.”

Charity looks down. The snow is falling heavier now, and the top of her hair is damp with the melting snow.

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t consensual.” She half whispers it, but Vanessa hears it as clearly as if Charity had shouted it in her ear.

Her whole body freezes, but she works hard to keep her face neutral, to keep the horror of it. 

Charity is clearly looking for some sort of repulsed reaction, some sort of rejection, because she tries to pull her hand back.

Vanessa lets go, but squeezes her knee before letting her hand fall away. “I’m so sorry,” she says, her own voice thick with the tears she’s holding in. “God, Charity, I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need this.” Charity straightens up, leaning her head back and wiping at her eyes. “This is the point where you walk away, swerve a whole pile of shit you don’t need.” She pastes on a fake smile. “You’ve done your bit. But you don’t need to take this on.”

“Charity!” Vanessa feels a few tears leak out, but she ignores them; instead she jumps up and stands determinedly in front of her. “You think you can tell me something like that and I’ll just go?”

Charity gestures around to the empty playground. “Everyone else does.”

“Well, I’m not like everyone else, am I?” Vanessa puts her hands on her hips.

Charity deflates a little, like the fight as seeped out of her again. “How do I tell him?” She drops her head. “How do I tell him what his father…”

“I don’t know.” Vanessa puts a hand on her shoulder, and Charity seems to lean into it subconsciously. “But I do know that you are the bravest, strongest woman I know-“

“Ness-“

“-and if anyone can find a way, then you can.” She feels her voice become thick with emotion. “You’re amazing .”

“I’m not!” Charity shakes her head hard, as if to dispel the words.

“You _are_. You survived so much, and you’ve made something to be proud of of yourself.”

Charity’s face crumples, and she tilts to the side, but Vanessa’s there to catch her. “I’ve got you,” she whispers, tears rolling down her own cheeks, as Charity cries herself out against her jacket. “It’s ok, I’ve got you.”

*** 

When Charity eventually says she’s ready to go back, Vanessa doesn’t even realise they’re still holding hands until they get to the gate and can’t fit through until they untangle.

The words they’ve shared hang between them, an invisible bond binding them together, and when Charity takes a deep breath, Vanessa turns to her. “You don’t have to do this. I can ask him to go.”

Charity shakes her head. “He deserves to know, doesn’t he? Where he comes from.”

They open the door.

Ryan’s still sat on the sofa, looking at his phone, but he gets to his feet when they come in.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Vanessa says softly, rubbing her hand gently over Charity’s arm. “Just call if you need anything.”

Charity nods, and Vanessa pads up softly in her thick socks.

She’s not surprised to see Noah perched on the landing outside the boys’ room. 

“You found her then?” He frowns as he looks at her, and she realises she must look a state, with tear tracks over her own face. 

“Yeah.” She clears her throat. “She’s downstairs talking to Ryan.”

Noah fidgets in his lap. “So she told you then?”

Vanessa hesitates, caught off guard.

“About _his_ dad?”

She sighs, and then lowers herself onto the top step. “Yeah.”

Noah nods. “I don’t think she meant to tell me.” He still isn’t looking at her, focused instead on his knee which he’s drawn up to his face. “But when he came round last time she was dead upset. Just crying for hours. And then she told me that…”

His voice wobbles and he breaks off.

Vanessa takes a deep breath. “You know that none of that is Ryan’s fault, right?” She tilts her head to catch Noah’s eye. “He doesn’t know. He didn’t know.”

Noah scowls. “He upset her! And he keeps showing up out of nowhere!”

“He wants to know where he came from.” Vanessa tries to keep her tone gentle. “That’s only natural. And it’s not his fault what his…how he was conceived.”

Noah wipes at his face angrily and Vanessa pretends to fix her sock to give him some privacy.

“You’re the only one who’s nice to mum,” he says instead.

Vanessa’s taken off guard and her head snaps up.

“She talks to you.” He shakes his head. “She doesn’t talk to anyone else.”

And really, that shouldn’t make her insides feel kind of melty. But it means something, she thinks. “I like talking to her.”

The door shuts downstairs, and they exchange a look.

“Do you want to…?” she trails off, but he shakes his head.

“You should go.”

Vanessa doesn’t wait to be asked twice.

*** 

Charity’s sitting with her head buried in her hands at the kitchen table. But when she looks up, although her eyes are red she’s not crying anymore.

“How was it?” Vanessa asks, then winces at the stupidity of the question.

“He’s upset.” Charity picks at her fingernail. “Wanted to know who it was. But I’m not ready to tell him.”

Vanessa nods. She sits down next to her. “And how are you?”

Charity shakes her head. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor.”

She’s pale, and she looks drained, and it makes Vanessa’s heart ache.

“I’ll make you a brew,” she announces. 

“It was a copper.” Charity says it when Vanessa has her back to her. “I reported it at the time but it got swept under the rug.”

Vanessa turns in horror. “Oh god, _Charity_!”

She shrugs. “Lots of people have had way worse things happen to them.”

“It’s not a competition.” Vanessa flicks the kettle switch, then sits back down heavily. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Charity shakes her head, pursing her lips together hard. “Don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t pity you.” Vanessa reaches out and places her hand over Charity’s. “But I care about you and I’m sad. I’m sad and I’m angry that this awful thing happened to you.”

“Yeah.” Charity takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Me too, kid.”

*** 

The snow falls more and more heavily all afternoon, and the boys get increasingly hyper until Vanessa gives in, wraps them up, and goes outside to build a snowman with them.

She persuaded Charity to come out too, and she stands in the door in the coat Vanessa made her put on, watching them. The squeals draw Noah out as well, and initially he stands beside his mum, talking quietly to her. But then, Moses throws a snowball at him, and Noah chases him around until he’s squealing and hiding behind Vanessa.

The snowman is quickly forgotten. Vanessa valiantly tries to keep them interested in finding stones to use as buttons, but the draw of pelting Noah with snowballs is too strong for them to resist. She sighs and heads over to Charity. 

“I think-“ she starts, when a snowball smashes against the back of her head.

The high-pitched giggling behind her tells her that was no accident, even as her mouth falls open, outraged.

“Oh, it’s so on,” she growls, bending down to gather up a ball, but her aim is terrible and she misses by a mile.

“Wow,” Charity says. It’s the first thing she’s said since they came outside. “That was some of the worst throwing I’ve ever seen.”

“Like you could do any better.”

Charity rolls her eyes. She gives Vanessa a look that says that she knows what she’s doing, but before she can reply another snowball hits; this time, on Charity’s stomach.

For a minute they all freeze. The boys have sensed Charity’s mood, have been cautious around her all afternoon.

“Oh, Johnny, you are going to regret that,” Charity says darkly, and he squeals in delight as she picks up a handful of snow and runs at him.

“Mummy!” he screams.

“Don’t look at me.” Vanessa grins. “You brought that in yourself.”

“Gotcha,” Charity laughs, pressing the small handful of snow into his face. 

Johnny splutters excessively.

Then Charity bends down and whispers something in his ear which makes him giggle. 

“Uh oh,” Vanessa says to herself, eyes widening, but it’s too late. A volley of snowballs rains down on her. “Noah!” she calls. “Help!”

He tilts his head. “What’s it worth?”

Vanessa grins. “I was going to bake some cookies later? You can have first dibs?”

Noah bends down without hesitation, and begins throwing snowballs at his mum.

“Traitor!” Charity calls, but she’s laughing, and for a minute, that dark look has disappeared from her eyes.

*** 

The next day, Vanessa finds Charity in tears on the sofa. She panics, until Charity explains that Ryan had called and asked to see her on Boxing Day.

“I just can’t wrap my head around it,” she whispers. “I thought he was dead for so long, and I never even spoke about him. And now he’s here, in my life, and he wants to know me…”

Vanessa had tugged her close, and Charity had let her, and they’d sat like that until Noah had come down the stairs. 

She’d pulled away then. Her heart had been thumping hard in her chest, and her stomach had been kind of twisty, but it also felt wrong, like she was taking advantage of Charity somehow.

What Charity needs is a friend, not someone who can’t get over a drunk kiss under the mistletoe a week ago.

To distract herself from that, and from the ache in her chest every time she walks past the B and B and doesn’t see or speak to Tracy, she plans activity after Christmas activity for them.

Charity and Noah grumble, but she knows by now that it’s mostly for show. And it’s a relief, to do these things with people who don’t demand that she’s jolly all the time, who understand that sometimes she’s not in the mood for festive cheer.

So she ignores the raised eyebrows of the rest of the village, and the string of exclamation mark emojis that Rhona sends her when they all walk into the school nativity production together, and persuades Charity to drive them to the Leeds Christmas market ( _“your car is bigger than mine!”_ ). 

And Charity’s getting into the spirit a little as well. One evening, she comes home from work with a packet of mince pies, and when Vanessa starts teasing her about being Christmassy, she pretends like she’s going to eat them all herself and holds them out of reach.

They have fun, despite how hard they both find it sometimes.

She knows Charity is struggling most with being away from Debbie and her kids.

One night, a couple of days before Christmas, they’re sitting up late together drinking mulled cider and wrapping presents.

Charity is a surprisingly neat wrapper, with tidy corners and invisible bits of sellotape.

And she takes one look at the dogs dinner Vanessa is making of wrapping Tracy’s handbag, the one Vanessa bought months and months ago when Tracy gushed over it and then forgot where she’d seen it, and grabs it off her, smoothing the creases Vanessa has made in the paper and neatly tucking the corners away.

“You’re dead good at that,” Vanessa says, watching fascinated as Charity’s fingers move quickly and surely.

She shrugs. “Normally I sit and do this with Debbie.”

Vanessa freezes. Charity rarely mentions her directly; it’s more allusions. 

“You must miss her a lot.”

Charity bites her lip. “She thinks I lied. About thinking the baby was dead. And she’s angry I never told her about the pregnancy.” She sets down the parcel. “And I get that, I really do. But she never even gave me the chance to explain and she knows more than anyone what happened to me…” She trails off. “Well, I suppose other than you, now.”

Vanessa clenches her fingers hard around her mug. But it’s so hard, not to take things like that to heart. That Charity opens up to her.

“I miss the kids.” Charity shakes her head. “Sarah’s had such a hard year. And Jack, he’s so good with Moses.” She looks down at the X Box game she’d been wrapping for him before she took over Vanessa’s wrapping. “I don’t even know if I’ll get to see them this Christmas.”

“I don’t mean to overstep,” Vanessa says gently, slowly, “but maybe if you called her…”

Charity shakes her head. “If she wanted to speak to me, she’d come.”

Vanessa tries very hard not to roll her eyes. “If she’s anything like you, then you’re both that stubborn you’ll be waiting for years to make up.”

Charity sighs. “Debs and me, we’re complicated.”

Vanessa nods; she has no idea what it must be like to have a kid that you had so young.

“But she knows, what that copper did to me. And she still got angry when Ryan showed up, and then she was defending Cain when Moses got taken, and she’s never on my side!”

She grabs the game and starts folding the paper gently around it again, and Vanessa decides to stop pushing. 

*** 

On the twenty third, they take the kids to the village panto.

Charity and her spend the whole time with their hands pressed to their mouths, trying not to laugh out loud every time something goes wrong. At one point, Charity actually snorts as some fake bird poo drops on the wrong person.

The boys love it, though, and afterwards they cheer loudly.

“Kim’s missed her calling as a pantomime villain.” Vanessa grins at Charity. “Although I reckon you would make a pretty good one too.”

Charity laughs. “Oh yes I would!”

Vanessa opens her mouth to joke back, when someone taps her on the shoulder.

“Vee?” It’s Tracy, her hands in her pockets and looking kind of shy.

Charity’s face darkens. “Remembered you have a sister, have you?”

“Charity!” Vanessa’s both exasperated and kind of touched, that she’d be so combative on her account.

Tracy looks stricken. “I, I’m sorry.”

“So you should be.”

“Charity!”

Charity widens her eyes as if you say ‘what?’ and Vanessa sighs.

“Do you want to take the kids home and I’ll be right there?”

Charity glares at Tracy one last time, then nods. 

“You guys seem…close,” Tracy comments when Charity has ushered the boys away.

Vanessa crosses her arms. “Yeah, well, it’s been nice to have someone to talk to these past few weeks.”

Tracy wilts a little at her tone. Her bottom lip wobbles and then her face dissolves into tears.

Vanessa’s eyes widen and she quickly steps forward, wrapping her in a hug. “Trace!” She rubs her back. “What’s wrong?”

Tracy takes a couple of large, gulping breaths. “I’ve been such an idiot,” she manages to get out. “I was so mean to you and I moved in with Pete after three weeks and now we’ve _broken up_ …”

Vanessa tugs her in again. “Shhhh,” she whispers. “It’ll be ok.”

“I’m _so sorry_ I was such a cow to you.” 

Vanessa pulls back a little, giving her sister a small, wet smile. “I’m sorry too.”

“Can I please spend Christmas with you and Johnny?” She squeezes Vanessa’s hand. “I’ll be so good, I’ll help with all the chopping.”

“Course you can.” Vanessa feels her throat close up with relief. “But I hope you don’t mind we’ll have a few guests?”

Tracy quirks her eyebrow. “What’s going on with you and Charity?” She doesn’t sound judgemental, but since Vanessa doesn’t actually know the answer, she feels defensive.

“What d’you mean?”

“I _mean_ , I saw you mooning at her all through the show!”

Outraged, her mouth drops open. “I was not!”

“She was mooning back.”

Vanessa feels her face heat up and she looks down at her shoes. Sometimes, sometimes, she thinks there might be something. A spark. The way they banter, the way they play off each other makes her heart thump and her palms sweat and surely, surely that kind of chemistry must mean something?

But she’s read this kind of thing horribly wrong before, and she doesn’t want to risk the friendship she’s forming with Charity.

“There’s nothing there,” she says firmly, and changes the subject to plans for Christmas Day.

*** 

After she’s hugged Tracy goodbye, and been assured by her that she’d rather stay in the B and B then sleep on Vanessa’s couch until the pub reopens, she’s about to walk home when someone else calls her name.

“Sorry to bother you,” Sarah says, holding her brother’s hand tightly.

Vanessa looks around and sees Debbie standing a little way off with her back to them, talking to Lydia and Sam.

“Could you please give this to Granny Charity?” 

Vanessa tries not to smirk at the combination of the word ‘granny’ with Charity’s name, since she’s never met anyone less granny-like in all her like.

She reaches for the outstretched Christmas card, but stops just short of taking it. “You know, she’s not working tomorrow afternoon. You’re welcome to pop around and give her this yourself.”

Sarah looks down at Jack, then back at her mum, biting her lip.

“She really misses you two. And your mum.” She feels kind of guilty, manipulating two kids like this. But if it might help to get Charity and Debbie in the same room, she’s willing to try. 

“We miss her too.” Sarah drops her arm, still holding the card. 

“Just think about it,” Vanessa smiles, and waves goodbye. 

*** 

The boys are hyper from the minute they open their advent calendars and realise it’s the last chocolate, which means Santa is coming that very night.

Charity is working the lunch shift, so Vanessa tries to tire them out by taking them to the park, but after half an hour of peace as they watch TV when they get home, they’re back to bouncing off the walls.

By the time Charity gets home, they’re loudly playing reindeers, with antlers on their heads.

“I didn’t know reindeer made car noises,” Charity winces at Vanessa as she comes in.

“They’ve made all sorts of other noises. Earlier Moses’s reindeer was also a fire engine, apparently.”

Charity slips out of her shoes, and winces, rubbing her heels again. “I swear, these shoes…”

There’s a knock on the door before Vanessa can answer.

Charity raises her eyebrows. “That Tracy?” 

She’d seemed genuinely pleased for Vanessa, when she’d come back the night before and told her that her and Tracy had made up, despite her hostile reaction at the village hall.

Vanessa shakes her head. “She said she had some last minute shopping to do.”

Charity shudders. “Better her than me.”

Vanessa agreed inwardly; they’d gone to the shopping centre in Leeds after their visit to the Christmas market and it was so full Vanessa felt like she couldn’t breathe after the first two shops. They’d run out to the car and both decided that online shopping was the way forward.

Vanessa moves to the door and when she opens it, Jack and Sarah are standing there.

“Hi!” Jack calls loudly.

Charity immediately appears beside her. 

“Granny Charity!” he calls, and Charity’s face lights up. She crouches down and he throws his arms around her.

“Where’s my favourite Grandson?” she asks.

Vanessa bites her lip and looks behind Sarah, but there’s no one standing there.

She realises she may have made a mistake. 

“What are you guys doing here?” Charity asks Sarah, tugging her in for a hug.

“Vanessa invited us.” 

Charity turns to her and Vanessa quickly holds up her hands. “That’s not exactly-“

“Where’s your mum?” Charity asks, peering hopefully behind them.

“Home!” Jack exclaims, moving past her. “Hi Moses!”

Vanessa has a very bad feeling, suddenly. “But she does know, that you’re here, right?”

The guilty look on Sarah’s face tells her everything that she needs to know and she groans.

“Debbie’s going to kill me!” Charity moans, throwing her hands up. “What were you thinking, Sarah?”

Sarah crosses her arms. “Vanessa said you’d missed us.”

Charity sighs. “Of course I missed you!” She sighs. “Look, go sit through there and I’ll call your mum.”

Sarah sighs right back at her but obeys.

Charity turns her stormy eyes on Vanessa.

“Why on earth would you invite my grandchildren without asking me first?” she snaps.

“I didn’t!” Vanessa shifts her weight guiltily. “I didn’t mean to! I just said that you’d been missing them-“

“Why were you even talking to them?” Charity’s in full arguing mode now: her eyes are narrowed and her mouth is a thin line.

“They talked to me!” Vanessa tries to explain, but Charity isn’t listening.

“This is going to have made everything worse with Debbie.” She shakes her head. “You just can’t help sticking your nose in, can you?”

She pulls her phone out and begins flicking through her phone book, pressing dial.

Vanessa moves into the living room, feeling a bit sick. She was trying to do a nice thing but she’s clearly got it spectacularly wrong.

She’d just wanted to help. To make Charity smile.

Instead she’s made everything worse.

“Your mum’s coming round,” Charity announced to Sarah and Jack. From the pinched look on her face, Vanessa takes that the conversation did not go well.

“Does anyone want a drink?” she tries.

Before they can answer, Charity snaps “I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

They wait in tense silence, and it’s only a couple of minutes before the front door bangs open, no knock.

Debbie storms in, looking furious and so much like her mother that Vanessa cowers a little.

“Don’t you two _ever_ leave the house again without telling me where you’re going!” she snaps. Then she turns on Charity, and Vanessa quickly jumps in.

“Debbie, I’m really sorry, it was my fault. I think I accidentally invited them. Charity didn’t know anything about it, I swear.”

Debbie turns to her, eyes flashing. “How do you accidentally invite someone?”

“Look,” she says, her tone frank and honest. “I was trying to do something nice, for Charity. She was missing you and-“

“Vanessa!” Charity snaps, and Vanessa flinches.

Charity’s looking at her like she hasn’t done since the first night she moved in. Like she’s a stranger, and not the woman she lounges on the couch with.

Debbie rubs the bridge of her nose. And then she says “Let’s go for a coffee.”

Charity stops short. “What?”

“Me and you, right now.” She jerks her head. “In the café.”

“Yeah, ok,” Charity says almost before she’s stopped speaking, her voice soft and eager.

“I’ll watch this lot,” Vanessa says, trying for jolly and like her stomach isn’t knotted with worry that she’s messed things up with Charity.

Charity doesn’t even glance at her as she pulls her shoes and coats on. 

Vanessa wonders how she can even begin to make this right.

***  
They watch the Muppets Christmas Carol.

Even Sarah seems to be enjoying it. Vanessa makes them all hot chocolates with lots of marshmallows and then perches at the kitchen table while the early winter sunset glows orange and pink through the window.

Noah pads down the stairs after a while, asking to borrow some tape to wrap his presents, and his eyes go wide when he sees the visitors.

“Where’s mum?” he asks, and when Vanessa tells him, he glowers. “She called mum a liar,” he says. “Didn’t even let her explain.”

Vanessa’s in no position to judge any of them right now. So instead all she says is “It’s Christmas. Maybe it’s time to set all that aside.”

He shrugs, but crouches on the floor next to Moses and watches the film with them.

Just as Vanessa is thinking of ordering the Chinese they’d decided on earlier, the front door opens.

She holds her breath as they come in. Neither of them remove their shoes but Vanessa keeps quiet.

“Hey Noah,” Debbie says.

He scowls. “So you’ve finally remembered we exist, have you?”

“Noah!” Charity says, but Debbie just quirks her lip.

“Looks like it.”

“We talked,” Charity tells him, and Vanessa tries not to look like she’s desperately listening to every word. “And Debbie’s invited us for Christmas Dinner.”

Noah crosses his arms. “I thought we were having Christmas dinner here?”

Charity hesitates, and for the briefest of moments her eyes flicker to Vanessa, who quickly looks down, trying to appear busy. 

“Christmas is for family, isn’t it?” Debbie says firmly. “And I think it’s time we all got together and made up, don’t you?”

Noah shrugs, and glances at Vanessa, who tries to give her most encouraging smile. 

She’s pleased for Charity, of course she is. This is great news. 

But she’d be lying if it didn’t also make her stomach sink a little, that they won’t be spending the day together.

“We’ll eat at mine with Chas and Paddy, and then go up to Wishing Well,” Debbie says. 

Vanessa turns her face away, trying to get her wobbling lip under control.

This is stupid. She should be _happy_ that she gets to spend Christmas with just her family.

“Do you guys want to stay for takeaway?” she manages to ask in a steady enough voice.

Debbie shakes her head. Her expression is much softer than earlier. “No, thanks. Got to get the house tidy for tomorrow.”

Sarah groans but rises off the sofa, and lets Charity cuddle her for a moment.

Charity walks them out, and when they leave, there’s palpable tension in the room.

“I’ll call the Chinese,” Vanessa says, but Noah holds out his hand for the sheet she’s written it all down on.

“I’ll do it,” he offers. “I know all our orders off by heart anyway.”

Vanessa gives the paper up reluctantly, because now she’s left with Charity alone, the two boys still distracted by the end of the film.

“About tomorrow,” Charity starts, and Vanessa smiles as brightly as she can. 

“I’m really happy for you, Charity.” She is, truly. “You deserve a family Christmas this year.”

Charity hesitates anyway.

“I’m really sorry,” Vanessa blurts our. “After everything you’ve told me, I know you can handle your own life and all the crap that might get thrown at you.” She sighs, dropping her arms. “I just wanted to help.”

Charity sighs. “I know.” Shrugging off her coat and hanging it up, she moves into the kitchen. “I know why you did it. I just, I need to deal with this stuff in my own way.”

Vanessa nods quickly. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Charity nods, then gives a small smile. “And hey, it did kind of work. We talked things out, me and Debs.”

“Yeah?” Vanessa manages a more genuine smile this time. 

“Yeah.” She pulls out a chair and sits down, and Vanessa quickly copies her. “I told her. About what happened with Ryan and with that cop. She knew some of it anyway but she hadn’t put it together and she gets it now, I think. Why I never mentioned it.”

Vanessa nods. She has her own thoughts about Debbie taking so long to reach out to her mum, who regardless of anything else had still been a child when she’d had Ryan. 

But it’s not her place to say any of that, certainly not today.

“Ordered,” Noah announces, and Vanessa rises to her feet.

“Well, then, let’s set the table,” she smiles. “If this is going to be our Tug Ghyll Christmas Dinner, let’s make it count.”

*** 

It’s a lot of fun, in the end. Noah and Charity argue over the last spring roll and don’t notice that in all the confusion, Moses has shoved it into his mouth.

They all get into their pyjamas and watch Home Alone together after, and then spend forty five minutes trying to persuade the boys into bed.

Eventually it takes Noah fake yawning and also saying he’s going to bed, despite it being only ten to nine, that persuades the boys to lie down.

Once the bedroom door is closed, they begin the hurried task of filling the stockings and taking a bite out of the mince pie and the carrot (Charity leaves that one for Vanessa).

When they’re done, they step back in satisfaction, nodding.

“Do you want your present now?” Vanessa asks, grinning.

Charity’s eyes widen. “You didn’t need to get me-“

“I know.” Vanessa goes to the cupboard under the stairs, the one where she keeps all the cleaning products, and pulls the gift out. “But I couldn’t resist.”

Charity takes it and peels the wrapping off slowly, until the shoe box is revealed.

The boots are almost exactly the same as the ones she has now, just the new version, so Vanessa hopes they’ll fit.

Charity looks down at the gift for a long moment, and then meets her eye, and the expression on her face makes blood start to rush in Vanessa’s ears and her palms start to sweat.

She puts the box down wordlessly and steps closer, still looking right at Vanessa, and Vanessa gulps and they’re standing toe to toe and she realises they’re almost in exactly the same position as a couple of weeks ago when they kissed.

“You really are something else,” Charity tells her, and Vanessa bites her lip and tries not to get her hopes up, but they’re standing so close together and Charity is looking at her with those intense green eyes and then they drop to Vanessa’s mouth and Vanessa wets them unconsciously and…

“Mum!” a little voice calls on the stairs.

Vanessa sags in disappointment and Charity closes her eyes for a long moment before turning to Moses.

“Why are you up?” she asks, frustration seeping into her voice.

Moses looks at her with big, worried eyes. “Does Santa know where we are? Because we moved!”

Charity and Vanessa exchange a look, that’s a mixture of exasperation and fondness.

“Course he does, babes,” Charity tells him firmly, picking him up and starting to carry him upstairs. “I gave him a call, yeah, and let him know where we are.”

“You have Santa’s phone number?” Moses sounds utterly amazed.

Charity nods seriously. “Vanessa gave it to me. She used to be an elf, you see.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes at Charity’s antics, but she’s amused all the same.

She hears them chatter away all the way up the stairs, and closes her eyes, trying to take a minute to collect herself.

Because for a minute there, she was pretty sure….it seemed like they might…

She wipes her damp palms on her pyjamas bottoms and hovers at the bottom of the stairs.

She listens hard, but she can’t hear any movement. And then she hears the boys’ door close, but instead of coming back downstairs Charity opens her own bedroom door.

Vanessa waits and waits, but there’s no further noise.

Disappointment hits her like a wave. She tries to swallow it down, to take it in stride, but if she’s honest, she got her hopes up.

She hasn’t felt a connection, a spark, with someone in so long. Possibly never with someone she’s this intensely attracted to.

And yes, Charity is difficult sometimes. Prickly. But she’s also funny, and surprisingly kind. And incredibly brave. 

And Vanessa wished, hoped so much that maybe it wasn’t one sided.

But she was clearly wrong.

She trails up the stairs slowly, avoiding the creeky floorboards to stop the little ones waking up again, and tiptoes to her room. 

An early night it is, then. Probably for the best, since she’s doing the cooking tomorrow. 

She folds back the duvet, but a sound stops her. It’s so soft at first she thinks she imagined it, but then it happens again and she realises someone is knocking on the door.

Hope rushes through her despite her best efforts; it might be Johnny, after all.

But when she opens it, it’s Charity, holding a gift in her hand.

“Went to get this,” she whispers, “but you’d gone.”

Vanessa accepts the gift, trying to act cool when her stomach is in knots.

“Can I open it?” she asks, and at the nod, gently peels back the tape.

It’s a jumper. A big, brightly coloured Christmas jumper with a blonde woman in a Santa outfit on the front who’s clearly meant to be a vet, judging by the apparatus in her hand, the dog on the table in front of her, and the words “Santa Paws” knitted at the bottom.

She grins; it’s exactly the sort of thing she loves. “Thank you!”

Charity smiles. “Noah helped pick it.” 

Vanessa’s touches. “I can’t wait to wear it tomorrow.”

She puts it on the chair where her jeans are already laid out, then turns back to where Charity is hovering, rocking a little from foot to foot and curling her tongue in her mouth the way she does when she’s thinking.

“Vanessa,” she says, and Vanessa steps forward. 

She’s pretty sure now that she knows why Charity is still standing in her doorway, but she wants to make sure.

“So,” she says softly, stopping right in front of Charity. “Do you think you can get to sleep with Santa on his way?”

Charity quirks her lips, and it’s so hot Vanessa feels her breath catch a little. 

“I don’t know,” she replies, matching Vanessa’s teasing tone. “I’m kind of wide awake.”

“Oh?” Vanessa looks up at her, widening her eyes in faux innocence. 

Charity leans down slowly, much more slowly than last time, but Vanessa isn’t caught off guard this time; instead, she cups Charity’s face in her hands, leans up meets her half way.

It’s not as soft and gentle their last kiss. It grows more passionate quickly, and Vanessa moans into it.

“God,” Charity sighs against her mouth as she pulls away. “You’re a really good kisser.”

“Ditto.” Vanessa leans in again and shivers when Charity’s hand wraps around her neck and her nails scrape lightly over her hairline.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to were ever going to snog me,” Charity whispers, twisting her other hand around the collar of Vanessa’s Christmas pyjamas.

Vanessa’s mouth drops open. “Why did _I_ have to kiss you?”

Charity grins. “Because you were mad at me for kissing you last time.”

“I was not!” Her voice is probably too loud for the sleeping little people down the hall. “I was mad because you said that thing-“

“Ok, ok.” Charity shushes her by kissing her again, and this time it goes on and on. Vanessa presses her body again Charity’s, and even through two layers of soft flannel she can feel the heat radiating off her.

They kiss without hesitation, without pause, and when their hands start wandering, Vanessa pulls away, tugs Charity inside, and gently closes the door.

“Are you sure?” Charity asks softly, her voice rough and her lips red and plump.

“Yes.” Vanessa hopes it doesn’t sound too eager, to desperate.

“Christmas come early, eh?” Charity winks, but Vanessa steps back at her words.

“You’re not…this isn’t because you feel sorry for me, is it? Because I don’t need a pity shag, Charity.” Embarrassment floods her face.

Charity sighs, an amused sound. “I was trying to make a joke, babe.”

Vanessa’s not convinced and it must show on her face.

“What’s it going to take for you to believe that I want you?” Charity asks, stepping closer.

Vanessa bites her lip. “You do?”

Charity nods. “God, so much.”

Vanessa reaches down and in one swift move tugs her pyjama top over her head. “Well then,” she whispers, tilting her head. “Come over here and show me, then.”

*** 

The boys were under the strictest instructions to wait until at least seven to wake them, and Charity even stuck an arrow on the clock in their room to show where the clock hands had to be for them to come through.

When the noise of them waking up ok Christmas morning echoes through the house,Vanessa’s glad that they had the foresight, in the early hours when they finally rolled apart, breathless, to pull their pyjamas back on.

Charity had half heartedly sat up, and said “I suppose I’d better go back to my room.”

But even though it was probably a terrible idea, Vanessa had tugged her back down. “Stay,” she’d whispered against the neck she’d sunk her teeth into not half an hour earlier while Charity moved inside her. “Please.”

And Charity had slid back down without protest, had let Vanessa press herself against her back.

Now, they both jerk into consciousness as they hear squealing in the hallway.

“The little monsters are awake,” Charity says, voice thick with sleep.

Vanessa sighs and pulls herself upright. She hears them run to Charity’s door and knock. “I’d better go catch them.” She moves to get up but Charity catches her wrist, tugging her down. Vanessa’s caught off balance and falls into Charity, who captures her mouth in a firm kiss.

“Merry Christmas,” Charity whispers, and it’s so smooth Vanessa _melts_.

“Merry Christmas,” she replies softly, before the door bursts opens and the little ones run in, screaming.

*** 

Vanessa thinks they’ve got away with it, until Noah comes out of his room just as they’re both emerging from Vanessa’s, and he gives them a look which makes her feel like she’s being x rayed. 

But he doesn’t say anything, and he’s jolly enough downstairs as he looks at his stocking, so Vanessa hopes that he’s ok with it.

Because she’s almost deliriously happy. 

It’s Christmas. Her son is having the best time. Her sister is coming round after all. And Charity spent the night with her last night.

“Morning!” Tracy yells as she lets herself in.

Johnny, hyped up and completely over excited, throws himself at her.

“Just in time for breakfast,” Vanessa beams.

Tracy draws her eyebrows together. “You’re in a good mood! Last year before you had to cook the turkey you were in a right flap.”

Vanessa shrugs. “What will be, will be.”

“Er, who has bodysnatched my sister?” Tracy asks loudly.

Vanessa meets Charity’s eye, and the look she gives her is positively indecent; Vanessa almost shudders at the intensity and has to turn to the sink so she doesn’t look too obviously turned on.

But Charity doesn’t make it easy. She keeps brushing Vanessa’s fingers with her own passing her things at breakfast, and sliding her foot slowly up Vanessa’s thigh.

At one point, she chokes on her tea when Charity reaches under the table and squeezes her thigh and Vanessa glares at her. But her heart isn’t in it; it’s intoxicating to be able to touch her, to be close to her. 

Her happiness only fades slightly when Charity sends Moses and Noah upstairs to get dressed so they can head over to Debbie’s. She lingers for a minute after they rush up, as if she’s going to say something to Vanessa, but Tracy’s an oblivious chaperone and Charity just smiles at her before she goes up.

“What are you grinning at?” Tracy asks, looking up from her phone. “Have you been on the drink already?”

“Give over,” Vanessa says, chuckling. “It’s Christmas! You’re supposed to be happy!”

Tracy continues to regard her with suspicion, but Vanessa just begins pulling pots and pans out and pins her to do list onto the fridge.

*** 

“I’ll see you later,” Charity whispers to her as they pull their shoes and coats on, and her voice is warm with promise. Suddenly, Vanessa’s desperate to fast forward the day so Charity can come home and slip into her bed again. She stands in the door to wave them off, and even blows Charity a sneaky kiss when Noah’s back is turned.

“Why aren’t Moses and Noah and Charity staying?” Johnny asks, dumping his new fire truck right in the middle of the carrots Tracy is peeling.

“They have to go see their own family, sweetheart,” Vanessa smiles. “But they’ll be back tomorrow.”

“He’s got well attached,” Tracy comments, watching Johnny push his truck between Vanessa’s legs. “And by the looks of it so have you.”

“What?” She tries to laugh it of, but she’s never been good at faking being casual. 

“Hmm.” Tracy shakes her head. “I won’t push, but I’m desperate to live vicariously now me and Pete are off.”

Vanessa jumps on the subject change. “What happened with you two, anyway?”

Shrugging, Tracy pulls another carrot towards herself. “It was just too soon. We were better off as friends and we realised pretty much straight away, but neither of us wanted to admit it.”

Vanessa nods. “So, after Christmas…when the Dingles move out will you be moving back in?”

Tracy gives her a sly look. “If there’s a bedroom free? Although I suppose Charity could share with you!”

“Tracy!” She feels herself going bright red. “They’ll be going back to their own house, thank you very much.” The work is almost done, although it’s been slowed by Christmas, and they’ll be back in before New Year.

Vanessa has been secretly hoping for a delay, but after last night, she’s hopeful that them moving out might not be the end of things after all.

“I’ll get this out of you yet, you know,” Tracy smirks. “We have all day and I’m very persuasive.”

*** 

Dinner goes mostly smoothly, although Vanessa completely forgets about the sprouts, which Tracy and Johnny are gleeful about.

They toast her dad and both her and Tracy get a little teary as they talk about the last couple of christmases with him. But for the first time in a long time, they’re genuinely reminiscing together, not at each other’s throats.

After, Johnny gets one of his board games out and they play it over and over again. But just when Vanessa thinks it might be time for a little post dinner nap, there’s a key in the door. It’s only five, so she’s surprised to see Charity and the boys standing sheepishly in the entrance to the living room.

“Surprise!” Charity says loudly, in that tone that tells Vanessa she’s pretending to be confident because she’s super worried. 

“What are you guys doing back here?” Vanessa asks. “I thought you were going to Wishing Well?”

“Well, I took a poll,” Charity says, wringing her hands, “and coming here instead won unanimously.” She hesitates. “Unless you guys would rather we left again, which is totally cool…”

Vanessa gives Tracy a hopeful look. Her stomach is doing flip flops at the idea that Charity came back early, that they all came back early.

But she doesn’t want to upset Tracy.

To her surprise, Tracy looks utterly delighted by this development; she’s grinning widely and her eyebrows at half way up her forehead. “Well, well, well,” she says.

“Is that a yes?” Charity asks, pausing with her coat half off.

“Oh, go on then,” Tracy grins. “Someone has to snog my sister under the mistletoe.”

Vanessa chokes loudly on her wine. “Tracy!” she splutters, while Tracy and Charity cackle.

She has a feeling those two together are going to be trouble.

*** 

At the end of the night Vanessa walks Tracy home. She insisted she didn’t want to stay, but she babbles on about how much she loves Johnny, and Vanessa, and how Vanessa deserves ‘lesbian happiness’ all the way to the B and B.

Vanessa’s mortified but chuffed as well, and rolls her eyes at herself when she hurries back home double quick.

The boys are in bed, and Charity is just blowing out the candles when she comes in.

“Hey,” she says, suddenly shy. They haven’t been alone together since they were pressed against each other this morning, and Vanessa aches to touch her.

“Hey yourself,” Charity grins. Any doubt about Charity maybe thinking of this as a one time thing disappears when she steps closer and grabs onto Vanessa’s jumper. “Come here,” she husks, and Vanessa melts against her instantly.

“Merry Christmas,” Vanessa whispers. In response, Charity growls and drags her up the stairs.

*** 

“The pub’s reopening on the twenty eighth,” Charity mumbles into Vanessa’s chest, while Vanessa draws intricate patterns on the soft skin of her back. “So we’ll be out of your hair then.”

Vanessa swallows her disappointment; it’s way too early to be living together, but she’ll miss seeing Charity in those in between moments in the day, the ones you only catch when you live with someone.

“But I was wondering,” Charity continues, still with her head against Vanessa’s chest, “if you might want to come to the pub on New Year’s Eve.”

Vanessa leans back a bit. “Like a date?”

Charity finally looks up at her, her face as open and vulnerable as Vanessa’s ever seen it. “Yeah. I mean, I’ll be working, but I’d like to see you. Start the year the way I mean to go on.” Then she bites her lip and looks down. “Sorry, is that a really naff idea?”

“Not necessarily.” Vanessa smiles. “Are you being serious?”

“You’re just about the only good thing to come out of a really rotten year.” Charity pulls herself up. “The best thing to happen to me in a long time.”

Vanessa swallows hard. “I’m really glad you guys got dry rot,” she replies, trying to hide how emotional she is.

But Charity must see, because she shakes her head at her, but tugs her close anyway.

“No crying on Christmas,” she whispers. 

“Not even the happy kind?” Vanessa asks, but Charity shakes her head.

“Nope.” Then she grins and reaches off the side of the bed, rising with Vanessa’s mistletoe hat on her head. “Now, I think that sister of yours gave me strict instructions about what I was supposed to do with you under the mistletoe, didn’t she?”

Vanessa pretends to roll her eyes but lets herself be drawn in for a kiss.

Merry Christmas indeed.


End file.
